Birthday poems

[clinicallybored.livejournal.com]

I wanted to write something romantic in my husband's birthday card. It's his first birthday since we got married and I just want to write something in the vein of how much I love and admire him.

For your troubles, here's a poem that I've been obsessed with lately:

Evolution in Nine Parts
1

My earliest memories of my mother
are sunburned. Pink cheeks.
Braids. Dirt under fingernails.

2

Before me, she was already self-conscious
about her stomach. Then I was made and I was too stubborn
to turn upside down inside her and they had to
cut her open and pull me out.

3

I learned how to put on lipstick
by watching her get ready for work
in the morning.

I learned how to criticize myself
by watching her cluck at the mirror,
swatting her hair down like a bad dog.

4

I am sorry for the white worm
I left across your middle.

5

She believes my sisters and I chose her
to be our mother. Handpicked her
from a basket of others.

This one. This one will teach us the most.

6

Learn to cherish this vessel,
the tired music of the body.

Let the skin be witness.
To grow. To grow.

7

I am standing in front of a mirror.
I am insulting myself out of habit
and suddenly my mother stops me,
“don’t say that, Sierra. If you think you are ugly,
you are creating that ugliness inside you.”

8

I am thankful for the bed in your belly.
I was a weary traveler.

9

My mother has a birthmark
the size of a grapefruit on her hip.
It is red and exploding.

I can only imagine
when she undressed for my father
the first time, it was like
watching the sun come up.

Sierra DeMulder

Comments

[duathir.livejournal.com]

XVII (I do not love you...)

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

By Pablo Neruda
Translated by Stephen Tapscott

[farrowing.livejournal.com]

oooh. really like this

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Don't know if this is quite what you were looking for, but:

The Tao of Touch - Marge Piercy

What magic does touch create
that we crave it so. That babies
do not thrive without it. That
the nurse who cuts tough nails
and sands calluses on the elderly
tells me sometimes men weep
as she rubs lotion on their feet.

Yet the touch of a stranger
the bumping or predatory thrust
in the subway is like a slap.
We long for the familiar, the open
palm of love, its tender fingers.
It is our hands that tamed cats
into pets, not our food.

The widow looks in the mirror
thinking, no one will ever touch
me again, never. Not hold me.
Not caress the softness of my
breasts, my inner thighs, the swell
of my belly. Do I still live
if no one knows my body?

We touch each other so many
ways, in curiosity, in anger,
to command attention, to soothe,
to quiet, to rouse, to cure.
Touch is our first language
and often, our last as the breath
ebbs and a hand closes our eyes.

[two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com]

thank you for this.

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

no worries :)

[kelly koenig (from livejournal.com)]

in my opinion, the most romantic poem in the world is "this is how she makes me feel" by anis mojgani. watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiJ5WCv23Ow

like a nuclear reactor power plant
that harnesses not any strange harmful energy
but rather the energy of the sun
of daisies, of golden marbles
filled up past my brim
behind me, there is a rainbow
the nuclear reactor that i am
harnesses the power of the rainbow
capturing the whole spectrum
of color and light

this is how she makes me feel
like a great grey stoned tall tower
rising up out of the ocean
from my room at the top of that tower
i watch the world
there is nothing but ocean for so far
from up here the ocean looks like it is
the biggest thing in the universe
from up here, it is the universe
from my window sitting
atop the top of the universe
watching its waves of water
move in unison together
i feel like maybe
i am bigger

this is how she makes me feel
like i was 17, running
in slow motion through a field
lit with light particles of dust
moving through the air,
the sun burning their bodies
perhaps it is dust
perhaps it is magic dust
perhaps this magical dust is
what i am made from
i open my eyes and
everything i see floats

i am on a boat
it is night
the world has calmed itself
just to hold me inside all that is dark
just to rock me gently

this is how she makes me feel
the subway chambers of moscow
i am vaulted, i have giant chandeliers
hanging from my underground ceilings
i glow with so much light
i am a ballroom for the trains of russia
if you happen to be a child
that has climbed down my steps
to yell into my body
those echoes will bounce their way
across those vaulted underground ceilings
this happens all the time
my dark tunnels are filled with these sounds

this is how she makes me feel
like i will live forever
like there is nothing that could possibly harm me
like this body will somehow stay so young, so perfect

there are cities growing inside my chest
the cities all look like new york in the fifties
every building is tall enough to touch a cloud
every automobile is a convertible
all the men wear hats and neckties
the women all have beautiful
shapes of color upon them
someone has saved a baby
there is a parade
someone has saved every baby
there is the biggest parade
moving through my streets
the skies explode with ticker tape
strangers kiss on every corner
their kisses are what make me live forever

this is how she makes me feel
like honey and trombones
like honey and trombones

[bloodrebel333.livejournal.com]

Lovely poem.

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

I got confused and posted the wrong poem earlier - this was the one I was looking for. I know this is late, but here it is anyway:

"Two Countries" - Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.