Moxie

“Since there was nothing about her long pale body that he had not observed and nothing that she had concealed and nothing now that he could not picture with painterlike awareness, a lover’s excited, meticulous connoisseurship, and since he had spent all day stimulated no less by her presence in his nostrils than by her legs spread-eagled in his mind’s eye, it had to follow that there was nothing about his body that she had no microscopically absorbed, nothing about that extensive surface imprinted with his self-cherishing evolutionary uniqueness, nothing about his singular configuration as a man, his skin, his pores, his whiskers, his teeth, his hands, his nose, his ears, his lips, his tongue, his feet, his balls, his veins, his prick, his armpits, his ass, his tangle of pubic hair, the hair on his head, the fuzz on his frame, nothing about the way he laughed, slept, breathed, moved, smelled, nothing about the way he shuddered convulsively when he came that she had not registered. And remembered. And pondered.” 

-“The Human Stain”, Philip Roth

Thou art the soul of a summer’s day,
Thou art the breath of the rose
But the summer is fled
And the rose is dead
Where are they gone, who knows,
Who knows?

Thou art the blood of my heart o hearts,
Thou art my soul’s repose,
But my heart grows numb
And my soul is dumb.
Where art thou, love, who knows,
who knows?

Thou art the hope of my after years-
Sun of my winter snows,
But the years go by
‘Neath a clouded sky.
Where shall we meet, who knows,
who knows?

Paul Laurence Dunbar  

What is death if not
the steaming and shreiking
of a kettle left
unnoticed.

What is death if not
the steady knocking of
a backboard, reminding the lovers
of the cadence of their love making.  

What is death if not
a scab, a skinned knee, 
another fall on a floor
freshly mopped.

What is death if not 
the red reminants left in
the belly of a wine glass
once full.

What is death
if not life disrobed -
barefoot on bathroon tile 
not yet warmed by day.

1/8/11 

Revel in my body, Revel in my mind

I. I drip and ooze.

 Every word that leaks
 from the corner of my lips
 reeks of a heart mangled
 by the clench of its savior.
 This dribble colors my clothes
 with the dull yellow that
 often tints the eyes of the sleepless.
 My bed is heavy and sinks
 into the floor boards for the fluids
 that seep from a body dejected
 are weighty.
 Under the covers my body lies
 longing to be worshiped
 by the hands of the lover who thought
 my nipples were temples,
 and my waist
 his final resting place.

II. I sway and rock
 in the wake of
 uncertain matters and
 unsettled feelings.

 I am roaming but I am not lost,
 I drift but I do not sink.

 I have been unfastened
 from my foundations and
 I have been shaken
 from my illusions
 but perhaps it is best,
 some say,
 to wade in the wake,
 unsettled and uncertain
 but also,
 unfettered.

III.  And now,
 I sit and listen
 to a new kind of quiet,
 an internal kind of quiet,
 a quiet that crept in and soothed my spirits
 before I realized that
 I had been waiting

 And if a new kind of love
 should come and bid me to leave,
 with a softened disposition and a quick
 glance back, I think that

  I will go.

  August, 2011