Eat me. Drink me.

'I am all the time thinking about poetry and fiction and you.' Seeding and feeding the rhythm of words. My name is Tara.

[spoetrys-blog]

Gracious Living ‘Tara’

lonely as four cherries on a tree at night, new moon, wet roads a moth or a snowflake whipping past glass lonely as the red noses of four clowns thrust up through snow their shine four whitened panes drawn from imagined memory lonely as no other lives touching to recorded water all objects stare their memories aware lonely as pain recoiling from itself imagining the cherries and roses reaching out

Tom Raworth

[spoetrys-blog]

Something with a Lifespan

How many times should I look at you and should I change my life? Monarch you make your orange assent to death. And how much dexterity can you really teach me? Does your courage even map onto these worldly obligations to friends, my job, desire for a little affection in the late hours of the evening, etc.?

I can't put myself ever in your head.

But I can lie on your wing, with my left eye letting my right dart forward as you do.

Don't ask something with a lifespan how to change your life.

Ask something you can't believe ever lived.

Katie Peterson

[spoetrys-blog]

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

i

Tell me it was for the hunger

& nothing less. For hunger is to give

the body what it knows

it cannot keep. That this amber light

whittled down by another war

is all that pins my hand

to your chest.

i

You, drowning

between my arms —

stay.

You, pushing your body

into the river

only to be left

with yourself —

stay.

i

I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after

backhanding

mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel

in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.

And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing

to surrender.

i

Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.

Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.

Say autumn despite the green

in your eyes. Beauty despite

daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn

mounting in your throat.

My thrashing beneath you

like a sparrow stunned

with falling.

i

Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.

i

I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once.

i

Say amen. Say amend.

Say yes. Say yes

anyway.

i

In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.

i

In the life before this one, you could tell

two people were in love

because when they drove the pickup

over the bridge, their wings

would grow back just in time.

Some days I am still inside the pickup.

Some days I keep waiting.

i

It’s not too late. Our heads haloed

with gnats & summer too early

to leave any marks.

Your hand under my shirt as static

intensifies on the radio.

Your other hand pointing

your daddy’s revolver

to the sky. Stars falling one

by one in the cross hairs.

This means I won’t be

afraid if we’re already

here. Already more

than skin can hold. That a body

beside a body

must make a field

full of ticking. That your name

is only the sound of clocks

being set back another hour

& morning

finds our clothes

on your mother’s front porch, shed

like week-old lilies.

Ocean Vuong

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This is too amazing not to post but it doesn't paste the correct formatting so here's the link:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/249156

t. x

[spoetrys-blog]

These

are the desolate, dark weeks when nature in its barrenness equals the stupidity of man.

The year plunges into night and the heart plunges lower than night

to an empty, windswept place without sun, stars or moon but a peculiar light as of thought

that spins a dark fire - whirling upon itself until, in the cold, it kindles

to make a man aware of nothing that he knows, not loneliness itself - Not a ghost but

would be embraced - emptiness despair - (They whine and whistle) among

the flashes and booms of war; houses of whose rooms the cold is greater than can be thought,

the people gone that we loved, the beds lying empty, the couches damp, the chairs unused -

Hide it away somewhere out of mind, let it get to roots and grow, unrelated to jealous

ears and eyes - for itself. In this mine they come to dig - all. Is this the counterfoil to sweetest

music? The source of poetry that seeing the clock stopped, says, The clock has stopped

that ticked yesterday so well? and hears the sound of lakewater splashing - that is now stone.

William Carlos Williams

[spoetrys-blog]

Christina

It all began so easy With bricks upon the floor Building motley houses And knocking down your houses And always building more.

The doll was called Christina, Her under-wear was lace, She smiled while you dressed her And when you then undressed her She kept a smiling face.

Until the day she tumbled And broke herself in two And her legs and arms were hollow And her yellow head was hollow Behind her eyes of blue.

He went to bed with a lady Somewhere seen before, He heard the name Christina And suddenly saw Christina Dead on the nursery floor.

Louis Macneice

[spoetrys-blog]

Lines Written in Dejection

WHEN have I last looked on The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies Of the dark leopards of the moon? All the wild witches, those most noble ladies, For all their broom-sticks and their tears, Their angry tears, are gone. The holy centaurs of the hills are vanished; I have nothing but the embittered sun; Banished heroic mother moon and vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.

William Butler Yeats

[spoetrys-blog]

Witch-Wife

She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs; In the sun 'tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of coloured beads, Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

[spoetrys-blog]

I Have Dreamed of You so Much

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real. Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again?

I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body. For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many days and years, I would surely become a shadow.

O scales of feeling.

I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up. I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby.

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

Robert Desnos

[spoetrys-blog]

My Butterfly

Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too, And the daft sun-assaulter, he That frighted thee so oft, is fled or dead: Save only me (Nor is it sad to thee!) Save only me There is none left to mourn thee in the fields.

The gray grass is not dappled with the snow; Its two banks have not shut upon the river; But it is long ago-- It seems forever-- Since first I saw thee glance, With all the dazzling other ones, In airy dalliance, Precipitate in love, Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above, Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance.

When that was, the soft mist Of my regret hung not on all the land, And I was glad for thee, And glad for me, I wist.

Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high, That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind, With those great careless wings, Nor yet did I.

And there were other things: It seemed God let thee flutter from his gentle clasp: Then fearful he had let thee win Too far beyond him to be gathered in, Snatched thee, o'er eager, with ungentle grasp.

Ah! I remember me How once conspiracy was rife Against my life-- The languor of it and the dreaming fond; Surging, the grasses dizzied me of thought, The breeze three odors brought, And a gem-flower waved in a wand!

Then when I was distraught And could not speak, Sidelong, full on my cheek, What should that reckless zephyr fling But the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing!

I found that wing broken to-day! For thou are dead, I said, And the strange birds say. I found it with the withered leaves Under the eaves.

Robert Frost

[spoetrys-blog]

The Seeing Eye

The small dogs look at the big dogs; They observe unwieldy dimensions And curious imperfections of odor. Here is the formal male group: The young men look upon their seniors, They consider the elderly mind And observe its inexplicable correlations.

Said Tsin-Tsu: It is only in small dogs and the young That we find minute observation

Ezra Pound

[spoetrys-blog]

Lorelei

It is no night to drown in: A full moon, river lapsing Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping Scrim after scrim like fishnets Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets Doubling themselves in a glass All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face Of quiet. From the nadir They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier Than sculptured marble. They sing Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song Bears a burden too weighty For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country, Under a balanced ruler. Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order, Your voices lay siege. You lodge On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage; By day, descant from borders Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse Even than your maddening Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling- Drunkenness of the great depths. O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver Those great goddesses of peace. Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

Sylvia Plath

[spoetrys-blog]

The Dead

Revolving in oval loops of solar speed, Couched in cauls of clay as in holy robes, Dead men render love and war no heed, Lulled in the ample womb of the full-tilt globe.

No spiritual Caesars are these dead; They want no proud paternal kingdom come; And when at last they blunder into bed World-wrecked, they seek only oblivion.

Rolled round with goodly loam and cradled deep, These bone shanks will not wake immaculate To trumpet-toppling dawn of doomstruck day : They loll forever in colossal sleep; Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up From their fond, final, infamous decay.

Sylvia Plath

[spoetrys-blog]

Barren Woman

Empty, I echo to the least footfall, Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas. In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself, Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies Exhale their pallor like scent.

I imagine myself with a great public, Mother of a white Nike and several bald-eyed Apollos. Insread, the dead injure me attentions, and nothing can happen. Blank-faced and mum as a nurse.

Sylvia Plath

[spoetrys-blog]

Winged and Acid Dark

A sentence with “dappled shadow” in it. Something not sayable spurting from the morning silence, secret as a thrush.

The other man, the officer, who brought onions and wine and sacks of flour, the major with the swollen knee, wanted intelligent conversation afterward. Having no choice, she provided that, too.

Potsdamerplatz, May 1945.

When the first one was through he pried her mouth open. Bashō told Rensetsu to avoid sensational materials. If the horror of the world were the truth of the world, he said, there would be no one to say it and no one to say it to. I think he recommended describing the slightly frenzied swarming of insects near a waterfall.

Pried her mouth open and spit in it. We pass these things on, probably, because we are what we can imagine.

Something not sayable in the morning silence. The mind hungering after likenesses. “Tender sky,” etc., curves the swallows trace in air.

Robert Hass

[spoetrys-blog]

Preface

Hand and foot, from head to toe, the body we know like the back of our hands, we say, patting our palms since we don't know back from front, don't know our ass from our elbow. I help Liz find her vagina to use a tampon her first time, Brooke tells me what to expect during a blow job, Jeff says to let the funneled force of Coors hold open my throat, a stranger gives me Valium when I reach for her hand on a plane. Now Depo, condoms, the Pill make way for FSH and BBT, how the sperm that makes boys goes faster, dies sooner, like boys, says Joanna, holding her little girl. Laura's fingers flick to show how the dye popped open her fallopian tubes. Rita Mae says a 48 year old's sperm could cause autism, Esther says kids are nice but they do ruin your life. Billy's friend announces, out of nowhere, I am so happy with my decision not to have children and none of us believe her. X shopped around for the perfect Jewish eggs, Y injected her belly, evenings, with little syringes, the bruises blooming black, now purple, now yellow and green. During implantation the nurses played soft eighties hits— I bought a ticket to the world, I know I know I know this much is true. She says in the ultrasound her ovaries looked like bunches of grapes. Z has a baby at forty-two— in vino she and her husband joke, in vitro a no-no in the Roman Catholic Church. Encyclicals entitled Donum Vitae, Dignitas Personae say why: the human person is objectively deprived of its proper perfection: namely, that of being the result and fruit of a conjugal act. The church, thank god, is soothing, confident, ready to clear all this up. Life a gift, human persons dignified. And we, most of us, are perfect, because fathers put their penises in moms.

Jill McDonough

[spoetrys-blog]

Epic

It’s you I’d like to see Greece again with You I’d like to take to bed of cyclamen You know I nurse a certain myth about myself            that I descend de tribus d’origine asiatique and am part Thracian or Macedonian cleaving to a Hellenic mystique after centuries’ migration inland

A FULL MOON       rising over the Acropolis I can repeat the scene    this time à deux as then I had no one to kiss slicing halloumi amid the hullabaloo of a rooftop taverna in   July The doors that opened to lovers pulled like tree roots from darkness         I close upon us now like book covers

The alcove in which we embrace is cool with brilliant tile and weirded by a dove’s note    chase of ouzo with Uzi      junta-style History makes its noise we duck till it passes     Love we think is our due Not we think like the epoch the unchosen thing we’re wedded to

Angie Mlinko

[spoetrys-blog]

Addiction to an Old Mattress

No, this is not my life, thank God ... ... worn out like this, and crippled by brain-fag; Obsessed first by one person, and then (Almost at once) most horribly besotted by another; These Februaries, full of draughts and cracks, They belong to the people in the streets, the others Out there – haberdashers, writers of menus.

Salt breezes! Bolsters from Istanbul! Barometers, full of contempt, controlling moody isobars. Sumptuous tittle-tattle from a summer crowd That’s fed on lemonades and matinées. And seas That float themselves about from place to place, and then Spend hours – just moving some clear sleets across glass stones. Yalta: deck-chairs in Asia’s gold cake; thrones.

Meanwhile ... I live on ... powerful, disobedient, Inside their draughty haberdasher’s climate, With these people ... who are going to obsess me, Potatoes, dentists, people I hardly know, it’s unforgivable For this is not my life But theirs, that I am living. And I wolf, bolt, gulp it down, day after day.

Rosemary Tonks