A Bracelet of Bright Hair About the Bone

The Romans put skulls into their love poems.
Skeletons and dry bones along with love.
As if violet was only beautiful against
something black. We also talked of death,
I perhaps more than you. It made me happy
to think of the newly dead body being lowered
into the coffin of the other. You found
this idea impressive but terrible.
I longed for your agreement and approval.
Wanted you to understand the hugeness of love.
You whispered that our bones would be mixed
together, but probably it was your way
to get me to stop crying and go to sleep.
Which I did, contentedly. I wanted something
to be done, some enactment to prove this secret,
this illicit love. Something too large.
I wanted it made of actual things. Dirt
and corpses even. As real as the table you
said your love was, that I could sit down to
and eat from if I wanted something permanent.
I wanted absoluteness to be made of my heart.

- Linda Gregg

 

i met a somebody (!!!!!) and all he asks is for my whole heart, my whole trust, my everything on the table, right up front. it’s startling and cogent. i’ve been swept up and won like none have shown courage before. i want to be that sure about anything, so i’m all in. 

Toward what island-home am I moving

Toward what island-home am I moving,
not wanting to marry, not wanting
too much of that emptiness at evening,
as when I walked through a field at dusk
and felt wide in the night.
And it was again the evening that drew me
back to the field where I was most alone,
compassed by stems and ruts,
no light of the fixed stars, no flashing in the eyes,
only heather pared by dry air, shedding
a small feathered radiance when I looked away,
an expanse whose deep sleep seemed an unending
warren I had been given, to carry out such tasks—
that I might find nothing dead.
And it was again the evening that drew me
back to the field where I could sense no boundary—
the smell of dry earth, cool arch of my neck, the darkness
entirely within myself.
And when I shut my eyes there was no one.
Only weeds in drifts of stillness, only
stalks and gliding sky.

Come, black anchor, let us not be harmed.
The deer leafing in the dark.
The old man at the table, unable to remember.
The children whose hunger is just hunger,
and never desire.

- Joanna Klink

 

ohmygod

my letter to you, today

Darlings, I have so much to say and think of you, in your whole unfinished evolution, with eagerness that makes me nervous and overjoyed. What an incredible, collective life we have, don’t you see? What a thrilling time to be a part of this, our shared story! We are all within reach; no one is more than a call, a trip, or a note away. Make the world smaller. Find the ones you want and pull them in. See the grit not as dirt to be avoided to keep yourself clean, but as the hard and necessary people and trials that give you courage and make your pearl shine. This is your oyster, sweetheart. This will be your great impact in a soft combustion of sound from a heart stronger than you can ever imagine. Listen. {lub dup… lub dup… lub dup…} Test that heart. Never be reluctant with any muscle. Use it and it will burn inside you day and night, making love while you sleep and bringing more in each day. Such a small thing with so much work to do, indeed the only work to be done, that will make your mark in this history. Let me be your witness and you be mine. Don’t let anyone get away with a stingy heart with you. Ask for their love and you will both be better for the question, regardless of how close you hold each other after. You are the rarest bud, more beautiful the more you grow. You are precious beyond expression. Your ache and desire make this world what it is and if you ever doubt your part in it, bring it closer. Pick up the phone, take a trip, write a note. Be seen and heard, but more importantly, look very carefully and listen with unconditional strength. Don’t be a skinny fat heart. Pull in the grit with the water of life and make pearls only to give them away and make more. Over and over, stretch your world and make it smaller. Love like you deserve it. Love the way someone is going to love you back. Lub dup… lub dup… lub dup.

Inventing the Body

The lungs were my idea.
Shins, his.
Breasts, mine, though he agreed.

He tried to name his favorite organ
Mr. WInky, but titles were forbidden from the start.

Laughter was a vital sign,
amended to a ticking in the chest.

We called the heart the heart
because we could not say its real name
even to each other, even in the dark.

- Dora Malech

prayer to saint anthony, finder of lost things

I have lost: churches cupped in my hands, the moon drowned in a glass, pocket watches tied to tree stumps, watchdogs swimming in lakes of whiskey, hungry fingers to the night’s saw teeth.

Keep those. Please find my hearts, those thousand knotted plums fled from my body. Return the small one in the pit of my stomach, worn smooth as marble. Return the one in my left hand that beats with the stroke of a hammer. Return the cilia-pricked one in my ear that hears the memories of animals. Return the one in my knee that sings like a bellows. The one in my wrist that stutters my pulse like a skipping record. The one in my right hand that spins sand into glass. The one in my eye that plucks the streets from the city. The one in my tongue that shakes the sea from the shoreline. Return the one in my heart that builds ships in a bottle, with its small surgeon hands.

- ryan teitman

You are beautiful like demolition…

You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding onto me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to us. Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood; we will be feared and kept well away from. It will be the stuff of legend, endless discussion and limitless inspiration for the brave of heart. It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality. We are gleaming animals painted in moonlit sweat glow. Our eyes turn to jewels and everything we do is an example of spontaneous perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch. The time I annihilated while I waited like a man doing a life sentence. Now you’re here and everything we touch explodes, bursts into bloom or burns to ash. History atomizes and negates itself with our every shared breath. I need you like life needs life. I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.

― Henry Rollins

Night falls

Night falls.
One’s heart descends
infinite steps,
enormous galleries
until it encounters sorrow.
There it rests, lying,
there, vanquished,
lies its own being.
Man can
bear it on his shoulders in order to ascend anew
toward the light sorrow-
fully: he can walk forever,
walk …
Thou who art able,
give us our daily resurrection!

- Jose Angel Valente

I don’t own …

I don’t own my emotions unless I can think about them. I am not afraid of feeling but I am afraid of feeling unthinkingly. I don’t want to drown. My head is my heart’s lifebelt.

- Jeanette Winterson

Accerelando

The lovers wait to lose their balance. They would dive gratefully into the half-dark, picking fingers, thighs, lips and tumescent parts. But wait, let’s stick to beginnings. Before a rustle in the chest, there were first meetings

in crowds and along unremarkable corridors. A grin, a look and the memory shrinks to the here and now, re-playable for future use in the hour before sleep, the hours before they meet again. Living is an endless piece of rope.

The lovers are jaded funambulists, steady gait slowed by the weight of loneliness. But legs quiver now, the bait already cast. And whose heart is not a hungry fish?

– Cyril Wong

Lessons in Hunger

Do you like me?
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
but blackness filled my ears,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.

Do you like me?
How absurd!
What’s a question like that?
What’s a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?

- Anne Sexton