Monday, October 31, 2016

Wait

Wait
Chop, hack, slash; chop, hack, slash; cleaver, boning knife, ax—
not even the clumsiest clod of a butcher could do this so crudely,   
time, as do you, dismember me, render me, leave me slop in a pail,
one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore,   
another still riven with idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was   
for whom everything always was going too slowly, too slowly.

It was me then who chopped, slashed, through you, across you,   
relished you, gorged on you, slugged your invisible liquor down raw.
Now you're polluted; pulse, clock, calendar taint you, befoul you,
you suck at me, pull at me, barbed wire knots of memory tear me,   
my heart hangs, inert, a tag-end of tissue, firing, misfiring,   
trying to heave itself back to its other way with you.

But was there ever really any other way with you? When I ran
as though for my life, wasn't I fleeing from you, or for you?
Wasn't I frightened you'd fray, leave me nothing but shreds?
Aren't I still? When I snatch at one of your moments, and clutch it,
a pebble, a planet, isn't it wearing away in my hand as though I,   
not you, were the ocean of acid, the corrosive in I which dissolve?

Wait, though, wait: I should tell you too how happy I am,
how I love it so much, all of it, chopping and slashing and all.
Please know I love especially you, how every morning you turn over
the languorous earth, for how would she know otherwise to do dawn,
to do dusk, when all she hears from her speech-creatures is "Wait!"?   
We whose anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."

When the spent day begins to frail

When the spent day begins to frail

by E. E. Cummings

when the spent day begins to frail
(whose grave already three or two
young stars with spades of silver dig)

by beauty i declare to you

if what i am at one o'clock
to little lips(which have not sinned
in whose displeasure lives a kiss)
kneeling, your frequent mercy begs,

sharply believe me, wholly, well
— did(wisely suddenly into
a dangerous womb of cringing air)
the largest hour push deep his din

of wallowing male(shock beyond shock
blurted) strokes, vibrant with the purr
of echo pouring in a mesh
of following tone: did this and this

spire strike midnight and did occur
bell beyond fiercely spurting bell
a jetted music splashing fresh
upon silence) i without fail

entered became and was these twin
imminent lisping bags of flesh;
became eyes moist lithe shuddering big,
the luminous laughter, and the legs

whereas, at twenty minutes to

one, i am this blueeyed Finn.
emerging from a lovehouse who
buttons his coat against the wind

Monday, October 17, 2016

And Then This Happened

Heroic physique
             Achilles
hidden, terrible
             trouble
Swishing & Flashing like a Tiger
The Lady or the...
Embodiment of Glorious Grief

Glorious grief of war
Beautiful, Graceful, Achilles
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright
Burning, burning, but always
hidden, terrible
Grief, Lady, grief.

Grieve in silence,
like a Lady

His word "terrible" 
τρομερός Lady


Shame.
Hidden and terrible
Twice born Achilles
Escaped

With the Lady
Or was it the Tiger?

Proud, Predatory, Tiger
Women trouble
Hidden, terrible
Victim, Lady.
Play, Lady.

ωραίος Ένδοξος Ἀχιλλεύς
Sea spawned Achilles

Heroic Achilles, Dangerou
Hidden, terrible, trouble
Survived Lady
Desolate