It's not in the listening to the absurdities

-

It's not in the listening to the absurdities
that spill out of your mouth, like milk
from a feeding infant's

nor in the sitting, eating, sleeping
together, as if we were brothers,
that I've come to understand

Honestly, I couldn't tell you how it is that
I know your emptiness, perhaps
we were brothers once, although now,
that seems impossible.

Forgive me if I ever have, I don't
pity you. That emptiness isn't real. It's clear
when you exhale on a cold fall night
and pause to admire the billowing clouds of warmth

In those nebulous formations (I know you see the same
as I do) your life; welling up from within

Its façade cold solid silent stone,

-

Its façade cold solid silent stone,
its windows, small and always heavily draped.

This kind of edifice was
well put together, of course,
Of course, no one would say different.

In such places things are private and secure, people,
behind their walls, never receiving guests, no no, but only
venturing out sometimes because, oh,
there is much too much to hide in a place like this
yes, much too much to hide.

Yes Yes anyone would say

Yes Yes anyone would say
I was crazy to leave when I did,
as I did, in that way.

No No I was not happy anymore
I was not happy and I could not
tell you. I can't remember why anymore.

Yes Yes I should have said something
I should have said anything. It would have
been better than leaving like that.

No No I couldn't tell you what
went through my head that day, no,
there was never a reason, or I've forgotten it.

Jokes aside by JAC (click here)

Jokes aside,
Between us
Silence

Sunk inside,
Between us
War

For friendship's sake,
This isolation

But truth be told
Between us
More.

The Great Figure by William Carlos Williams

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

2 poems by Edgar De La Piedra

|| UNTITLED ||

En el rincón que me ves
llorando-- alli mi vida se esconde.

Quando ya no esté
mi rincón se convertira,
poco a poco,
en Tú rincón
de lagrimas.

:: English Translation ::

The corner in which I stand,
as you watch me crying-- my life
is hidden there.

When I am gone, my corner will become,
bit by bit, your corner
of tears

|| UNTITLED ||

Si me acompañas
Seras mi Tierra
Si me dejas
Sere tu Luna

:: English Translation ::

As my companion
You are my Earth
If we’re apart
I'll be your Moon

Written by Edgar De La Piedra 6-18-04
Translated by me

sugarcoated

It took a moment to go down,
with an awful burning.

"That means it's working," he thought. "Killing
off the bad. . ."

The pain was the only sacrifice,
but not really,
not in this case.

It's only the initial taste
he would later complain about
saying, "The bitter truth
is better taken
with a bit of sugar."

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it--



A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot



A paperweight,

My face featureless, fine

Jew linen.



Peel off the napkin

O my enemy.

Do I terrify?--



The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.



Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me



And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.



This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.



What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see



Them unwrap me hand and foot--

The big strip tease.

Gentlemen, ladies



These are my hands

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,



Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.



The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut



As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.



Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.



I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.



It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

It's the theatrical



Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:



'A miracle!'

That knocks me out.

There is a charge



For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart--

It really goes.



And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood



Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.



I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby



That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.



Ash, ash--

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--



A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.



Herr god, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.



Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.


23-29 October 1962

Because the hole, by Richard Fox

-


Because the hole

left by the stone
in my halved avocado was smooth

& undamaged & perfectly round
I could ignore fashion

& step out on my own. I would ape
neither image nor text as I had before:

would be the very best of friends
my own best man:

no dog
no boy
no love
no moon

Thirst

I turn the handle and wait
as the water fills my cup.

It's early morning-- most probably you
are asleep. I hear the birds wake
with their chirps, their songs. The sky

is just beginning to turn the color of twilight.

Does it matter to me
if someone else is in your bed with his
arms wrapped around you
the way mine would?

I ponder that as my glass fills, as
I look through the window up
at the sky...

The clouds are big and gray, so it looks
like rain and suddenly,

it's not water I want.

The Listener, by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses

I cannot see you a thousand miles from here,
but I can hear you
whenever you cough in your bedroom
or when you set down
your wineglass on a granite counter.

This afternoon
I even heard scissors moving
at the tips of your hair
and the dark snips falling
onto a marble floor.

I keep the jazz
on the radio turned off.
I walk across the floor softly,
eyes closed,
the windows in the house shut tight.

I hear a motor on the road in front,
a plane humming overhead,
someone hammering,
then there is nothing
but the white stone building of silence.

You must be asleep
for it to be this quiet,
so I will sit and wait
for the rustle of your blanket
or noise from your dream.

Meanwhile, I will listen to the ant beating
a dead comrade
across these floorboards---
the noble sounds
of his tread and his low keening.

Desire, Desire, Desire...

-

I see you at the train station—
figment—
with our lives dragging behind you

all that time— spent

but it's not you in
black pants—
the way you'd wear yours, a
coat—
like I imagine you'd wear now


--Written December 05, 2004 (revised 8-20-05)


[Rewrite]
I see your figment at the train station
with our lives dragging behind

black pants like yours;
coat like one you'd wear now

but it's only me in a strange wanting,
no stranger to a stranger wanting.
--[Rewritten] December 24, 2004

--------------------

I am nutritious
Eat me
Digest me
Let my flesh
Feed yours

Let me satisfy you

Your body will
Decompose me

I'll feed your cells
I'll give your heart
Generous pulse

I'll flow through your veins
In your blood

Let me become so much
of you

Let me...
--Written July 18, 2004

--------------------

So many unsent letters

And unsaid words

I dont want to bother you

I want to leave you alone

And I can

But really

I am dying to be with you again!
--Written June18, 2004

Sculpt me out of a small block of marble

-


Sculpt me out of a small block of marble

for my face a song
my torso
carved undone, chipped...

for my arms two poems

and for my legs and feet
I'd like blades

of grass
--Written December 16,2004

I watched the sunset from my office window.

-


I watched the sunset from my office window.

Up here, far away
from two lives down there

the one I have
and the one I want

I see the city, a running pattern
of broken amber dots

on a black plane
stretching over the

slowly darkening horizon.

Written---November 6, 2004

Last night

-


Last night
I felt your breath on my neck.

I put on my clothes and shoes;
left a note
taped to the door.

I left you.

At home the sun
was being filtered through the linen curtain
of my bedroom window.

Unbuttoned, unzipped, unclothed
I sank into my bed.
I smelled of you
and of too much to drink
--Written June 26, 2004

This morning

-


This morning
I opened my eyes
and saw you lying next to me.

Each eye resting behind
a thin layer of flesh.

The sound of your breathing...
before you woke up.

--Written October 2003

Touch Me - By Stanley Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
______________and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

yes is a pleasant country:

yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year

both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear

love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)

by e. e. cummings

Photography

The sheets still
in the bed where I knew you.

The formula for landscape
is one-third sky two-thirds land:

the lumber-wanting forest
turns itself carnal.

In the love scene
the cool breath of bed sheets lifts

and my heart is a muscular door stop
shifting under your hand,

the sheets remaking me.
Through the door

the unstopped night
will come. The bed

soon inclement and bleached with snow
will still. While reading

I will concentrate on the falling asleep
I must do. My body

is a tunnel I hide in whenever the sky
turns particular.

You buy clothes to wear
that have never touched the skin

of other men. I take
a picture about it.

By RICHARD FOX
Date Unknown

A poem, by Curtis Tuckey

The smog that hides the stars above,
The gun that shoots the flying dove,
The piercing knife and strangling glove:
These are the lasting emblems of
Your love.

Date Unknown