greatpoetry | Entries tagged with 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.

mehinda.livejournal.com

Sometimes Even My Knees Smile

You have replaced Beethoven
in my life.

My bones are piled up in neat little
stacks
waiting for you to
put them in your pocket.

The prickly movement under my skin,
an alligator stranded on the desert,
is your mustache
which I have been stealing, hair by hair, in your
sleep each night.

A brown thrasher is pecking at my throat.
The breath of birds
that pases over my wrists and nipples
opening the umbrella,
is your touching. I would open up anything
even my belly or crack open my bones
for you.

I would give you
anything
except a poem. Those I hold close
like diamonds up the ass in an African mine;
even those I would
give too
if you asked
but it is Beethoven you replaced
in my life.
And he had music so loud in his head
he didn't need words.
The poet is the lover who can't speak to--
isn't heard by--
his love.

Current Music: So Much Love - Dusty Springfield

fflo.livejournal.com

(in response to qwpoi's call for revenge poems)

Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch
for my motorcycle betrayer

God damn it,
at last I am going to dance on your grave,
old man;

you’ve stepped on my shadow once too often,
you’ve been unfaithful to me with other women,
women so cheap and insipid it psychs me out to think I might
ever
be put
in the same category with them;
you’ve left me alone so often that I might as well have been
a homesteader in Alaska
these past years;
and you’ve left me, thrown me out of your life
often enough
that I might as well be a newspaper,
differently discarded each day.
Now you’re gone for good
and I don’t know why
but your leaving actually made me as miserable
as an earthworm with no
earth,
but now I’ve crawled out of the ground where you stomped me
and I gradually stand taller and taller each
day.
I have learned to sing new songs,
and as I sing,
I’m going to dance on your grave
because you are

dead
dead
dead

( under the earth with the rest of the shit, )

You ride a broken motorcycle,
You speak a dead language
You are a bad plumber,
And you write with an inkless pen.

You were mean to me,
and I’ve survived,
God damn you,
at last I am going to dance on your grave,
old man,
I’m going to learn every traditional dance,
every measure,
and dance dance dance on your grave

one step

for every time
you done me wrong.

-- Diane Wakoski

strangeidea.livejournal.com

THE RING
by Diane Wakoski

I carry it on my keychain, which itself
is a big brass ring
large enough for my wrist,
holding keys for safe deposit box,
friends' apartments,
My house, office and faithless car.

I would like to wear it,
the only ornament on my plain body,
but it is a relic,
the husband gone to other wives,
and it could never be a symbol of sharing,
but like the gold it's made of, stands for possession, power,
the security of a throne.

So, on my keyring,
dull from resting in my dark purse,
it hangs, reminding me of failures, of beauty I once had,
of more ancient searches for an enchanted ring.

I understand, now, what that enchantment is, though.
It is being loved.
Or, conversely, loving so much that you feel loved.
And the ring hangs there
with my keys,
reminding me of failure.

This vain head full of roses,
crystal, bleeding lips,

a voice doomed to listen, forever,
to itself.

Current Music: Kimya Dawson - Anthrax

3g0.livejournal.com

This Beautiful Black Marriage

Photograph negative
her black arm: a diving porpoise,
sprawled across the ice-banked pillow.
Head: a sheet of falling water.
Her legs: icicle branches breaking into light.

This woman,
photographed sleeping.
The man,
making the photograph in the acid pan of his brain.
Sleep stain them both,
as if cloudy semen
rubbed shiningly over the surface
will be used to develop their images.

on the desert
the porpoises curl up,
their skeleton teeth are bared by
parched lips;
her sleeping feet
trod on scarabs,
holding the names of the dead
tight in the steady breathing.

This man and woman have married
and travel reciting
chanting
names of missing objects.

They enter a pyramid.
A black butterfly covers the doorway( Read more... )

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I Eat Poetry

Entries tagged with diane wakoski

Belly Dancer by Diane Wakoski

Sometimes Even My Knees Smile - Diane Wakoski

Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch

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