j'adore
i crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
silent and starving, i prowl through the streets.
bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
i hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
i hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
i want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
i want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
i want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and i pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of quitratue.
~ 'i crave your mouth, your voice, your hair'
pablo neruda
i shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
i lift my lids and all is born again.
(i think i made you up inside my head.)
the stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
and arbitrary blackness gallops in:
i shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
i dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
and sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(i think i made you up inside my head.)
god topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
exit seraphim and satan's men:
i shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
i fancied you'd return the way you said,
but i grow old and i forget your name.
(i think i made you up inside my head.)
i should have loved a thunderbird instead;
at least when spring comes they roar back again.
i shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(i think i made you up inside my head.)
~ 'mad girl's love song'
sylvia plath
if i were a cinnamon peeler
i would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.
your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. the blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to you hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. this ankle.
you will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.
i could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
i buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...
when we swam once
i touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
you climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
and you searched your arms
for the missing perfume
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.
you touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
i am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. smell me.
~ 'the cinnamon peeler'
michael ondaatje
i went to the garden of love.
and saw what i never had seen:
a chapel was built in the midst,
where i used to play on the green.
and the gates of this chapel were shut,
and thou shalt not, writ over the door;
ao i turn'd to the garden of love,
that so many sweet flowers bore,
and i saw it was filled with graves,
and tomb-stones where flowers should be:
and priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
and binding with briars, my joys & desires.
~ 'the garden of love'
william blake
from my bed
i watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.
one flies
off.
then
another.
one is left,
then
it too
is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone
still.
and i am
reduced to bird
watching.
just thought i'd
let you
know,
fucker.
~ '8 count'
charles bukowski