Friends // Laure-Anne Bosselaar

[teapple.livejournal.com]

this is the viscous heart I hide from you:
gnashing, polluted, hooked to my ribs
like a burr, stuck there and stinging,
and it’s only four fourteen in the morning.

Those sudden shudders my waking alarm,
then the daily discipline of shutting away that heart,
shambling through the house, touching things,
stroking their shapes as if it could help me not

be the Bad Sower’s daughter each morning:
the pit from a seed he sowed and left to parch,
and no crows would feed on it. So I lived. I don’t
want to explain this further, I’m done with it.

But this for you: on the days I touch your books,
read your letters, recall a gaze, the delicate
dangle of an earring, or the throwing
back of a head in laughter,

it’s you seeding the first beat into the heart
I open. And as the sun heaves daylight
into the parched tree by my window,
and rats burrow away, when pigeons come

down to feed on dust and pizza crusts, I thrum
the light syllables of your names on my sill with all
ten fingers, typing them firmly into the brick,
and counting their beats, counting their beats.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Number 20

[mariashes.livejournal.com]

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72 | Charles Harper Webb

[exceptindreams.livejournal.com]

"Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72"
Charles Harper Webb

May there be an afterlife.

May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.

May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with razor-
       blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat stopped
       at a red light, spike the rifle butt, and the concrete on which you'll
              fall.

May the needles the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
       every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, "Please don't
              shoot me. Please."
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away;
Then may he take you with bare hands.

May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive a nail
       and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw.
May his arms, which powered handstands and made their muscles jump
       to please me, wrap your head and grind your face like stone.
May his chest, thick and hairy as a bear's, feel like a bear's snapping
       your bones.
May his feet, which showed me the flutter kick and carried me miles
       through the woods, feel like axes crushing your one claim to man-
       hood as he chops you down.

And when you are down, and he's done with you, which will be soon,
       since, even one-eyed, with brain damage, he's a merciful man,
May the door to the room open and let him stride away to the Valhalla
       he deserves.
May you—bleeding, broken—drag yourself upright.

May you think the worst is over;
You've survived, and may still win.

Then may the door open once more, and let me in.

New rules: request posts.

[moireach.livejournal.com]

Hello to members new and old, including those who found us through LJ Spotlight.

greatpoets welcomes requests for poems on specific themes, but has added two new rules:

• Please check the archive of previous requests to ensure you're not repeating a previous request. You can use the 'Previous 10' link at the top and bottom of each page to navigate back through older posts.


• Please include a poem to share with the community in all request posts.

For a refresher on these and our other posting rules, you can always check the community profile page.

Thanks to all for keeping this a vibrant, poetry-filled community.

Geometry - Rita Dove

[ion-11.livejournal.com]

I prove a theorem and the house expands:
the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,
the ceiling floats away with a sigh.

As the walls clear themselves of everything
but transparency, the scent of carnations
leaves with them. I am out in the open

And above the windows have hinged into butterflies,
sunlight glinting where they've intersected.
They are going to some point true and unproven.

Adding to the collection

[orchidsofdesire.livejournal.com]

The Pope's Penis
It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.

It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat -- and at night

while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

By Sharon Olds

Belly Dancer by Diane Wakoski

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Can these movements which move themselves

be the substance of my attraction?

Where does this thin green silk come from that covers my body?

Surely any woman wearing such fabrics

would move her body just to feel them touching every part of her.

Yet most of the women frown, or look away, or laugh stiffly.

They are afraid of these materials and these movements

in some way.

The psychologists would say they are afraid of themselves, somehow.

Perhaps awakening too much desire—

that their men could never satisfy?

So they keep themselves laced and buttoned and made up

in hopes that the framework will keep them stiff enough not to feel

the whole register.

In hopes that they will not have to experience that unquenchable

desire for rhythm and contact.

If a snake glided across this floor

most of them would faint or shrink away.

Yet that movement could be their own.

That smooth movement frightens them—

awakening ancestors and relatives to the tips of the arms and toes.

So my bare feet

and my thin green silks

my bells and finger cymbals

offend them—frighten their old-young bodies.

While the men simper and leer—

glad for the vicarious experience and exercise.

They do not realize how I scorn them;

or how I dance for their frightened,

unawakened, sweet

women.