Tag Archives: man
The Evolution of the Orgasm, a poem
The Evolution of the Orgasm, a poem
Does the new-twinned cell, as it sorts out
one tangled rat’s nest of nucleus
from the other with its slow patient dance
of cytoplasm and membrane, somehow know
the sweet involuntary contraction and release
of its division? An organism’s inner tension
promotes as well as restrains
total disintegration. Is each duplicating
mitochondrion frozen fast in the stream
of its own powerful, mindless barrage
of electrons? Life on a cellular level
is both straightforward and incomprehensible.
Could any physical laws possibly hold
resolute in the embrace of such rapture?
Was the orgasm the means of our worldly
creation, or the end? Less can be more,
but not in this case. Is what makes you
come so easily explained? As usual, let us
personify: she is rich-skinned, veiled
cool in a white ruffled nightshirt….
Well-muscled, each movement sure, swift,
with only one purpose. Her hair is short
or long, pulled tight or draped loose,
but the look in her eyes is a steely
constant, it says, I know you. I have always
known you. I will know you even after
your tired flesh has flown away singing
through the air like a frightened dove,
and your pale, forgetful bones have fallen
into fine dry grit. In my relentless arms
you will learn to surrender all fears, all
your dark secrets. Forever and ever
will I love you. Is it any wonder we dream
of her so often, with such helpless longing?
Filed under compassion, courage, eternity, evolution, fear, human beings, love, man, mitochondria, mortality, nature, passion, personification, poetry, sex, woman
Blood Mother, a poem (sculpture in the Orsay Museum, Paris)
Blood Mother, a poem (sculpture in the Orsay Museum, Paris)
She is made of wood, a silken hardness that begs touching.
Should anyone reach, trail a fingertip across her flesh,
the man in straps would speak, his mumbled words rasping
through the stopped air, turning beating cells boorish,
piercing desire’s heart, killing a love so old, so pure,
it has no real name. Such is obvious from the way she stands,
lifting her heavy hair, each hand the careful cynosure
of being — she drapes the primal fiber like garlands,
letting it flow free only to capture the thickness of trees.
Her eyes are closed. Under abraded lids resides the look
everyone knows: pupils enlarged by pain; simple refugees
from knowledge received of the body, woman’s final textbook.
The belly asks first. It says come, reside here within me,
neither cold, nor afraid, nor desirous — twirl and dream
of nothing but this spare salt universe, wear only veins, silky
wisps of hair, discreet, pale limbs enfolded by soft cream.
Her feet nourish the ground, her head becomes the forest.
Walk where her shadow falls, seek the margin of her arms,
soothe your tired neck in mother’s lucid heat, hedonist
entity you have become, set in blind motion under charms
worked by no laboratory scientist in a trim white robe.
Rather, you emerged redly from a thousand other deaths,
one messy cauldron holding shapes; the patient, springy web
of chosen elements drawn together, joined by many faiths.
The breasts want, too. Child, they sing in unison, nourish your
body with our thin white blood — suckle, cradle the nipple deep
against the palate, pull the flow from a dozen small pores, gnaw
strong like a velveted vise, drink true until you swallow sleep.
The need to believe is more than skin. Need is the whole glossy
image on this lonely wall; what it means to be such a mechanism!
She never schemed for her fey power — nor does she expect mercy.
You exist, mere fragile accident, in perfect jeweled synchronism.
Not as simple as punishment, nor as complex as grace, her skills
for life reside at a place men cannot enter, no fault of their
own. They build instead the world, of brick, stone; shy stabiles
meant to appease longing, courageous memorials to light, to air.
Heads of Caracalla, a poem
Heads of Caracalla, a poem
There are three of the ancient busts on display
in the Louvre. Poor soul: he only controlled
his great empire for six years. I’ve been married
for seven, and though it isn’t like ruling Rome,
it’s hard enough. Thus, I can’t imagine how
he managed, even if he could imprison or execute
at will. Maybe stress did him in at twenty-nine.
True enough, during the heated third century
after Christ, the common man was too often dead
by thirty, teeth rotted away to stumps,
complexion scarred and worn, creased deep
like pegged and scraped hides drying in the sun.
Surely Caracalla’s own hands were soft,
languorous and pudgy, with those meticulous
shiny nails? Perhaps he was afflicted
with diabetes, or simply poisoned by his lovely
but illiterate wife. Will anyone wonder
what carried me off after a thousand years —
or even ten? During three decades on earth,
sculptors recorded all his secrets: first the pretty
baby, innocent and round-cheeked as any three-year-old,
blunt-cut curls springing away from his tender forehead
like the petals of an iris. Around the time
of his ascension, he had become sullen, his eyes
impenetrable, glassy, his torso clumsy, thick-necked,
his full, full lips bowed with palpable cruelty.
I must admit, by the year of his death, he’d grown
into his flesh — he looks wise, even kind,
and his drilled marble eyes are lively, holding
a gleam of curiosity for something outside his own
imperial body. I place my finger against the hard marble
cheek, hearing my own frail life tapping its brisk heels.
the divided self, a poem
The Divided Self
That lonely man and that sad woman
are dead now, but I still can’t
get away from their lawful claims.
They possess my hands, my feet,
my face. I have only been loaned
these things: possessions assembled
for me out of unseen molecules
I believe in by faith, with thanksgiving.
Blind, jerking passion such as this
nurtures the kind of organized madness
I learned to live with a long time ago.
Short and sweet, to the point:
I hate them bringing me into the world!
What on earth were they thinking,
warm lust pressed against the cold metal
of a postwar kitchen table?
Or did they simply writhe on the linoleum?
Alone, I existed weightless, unknowing, free.
I never approved the intrusion of his
sperm, wriggling madly for oblivion;
tiny kamikaze. No wonder men feel
like clumsy, oafish gods half the time.
As for Mother, she arched dizzily beneath him
half-clothed: strapless formal, silk stockings,
shiny pumps with spike heels,
and though she opened her flesh,
how she longed to kill him with her shoe.
Such war made me. Secret wishes
do a body in. I am that frail universe
mindlessly created, allowed to run wild.
Filed under legal writing, mysterious, poetry
(Love is like a) Chain of Possession, a prose poem
(Love is like a) Chain of Possession
My black cat is a shadow — with yellow eyes. She yawns, and the startling pink of her mouth lies exposed. Fangs of unbelievable sharpness. How is it she refrains from using them on me? I feed her, I pet her, I clean up her waste. She kneads my lap, sharp needles encased in velvet. I, too, am a cat — fangs and claws hidden in softness. The illusion of receptivity. The startling pink of the vagina yawns with boredom. We need more air, moving air, air to ruffle our fur and wake us from this somnolence.
Sweet sleepiness like honey — clear and amber and sticky. I coat your penis in honey, taste the sweetness, but it isn’t enough. I want something wilder, something dangerous. the fascination with death, with destruction, with smoking cigarettes. The power of the flame to obliterate. My heart alternately rages fierce, then trembles, vibrates like a small bird, poised for flight. I cannot be tamed. Mama tamed herself with scotch whiskey — damped her needs with ice and amber fluid; put out the flame. She gave me my first black cat, hoping I could fly her dreams for her. She only hated me for my freedom, her gift.
I fished, as a child, like a woman possessed: dragging flailing body after flailing body out of the murky canal water, trying to birth myself in a way mama had not. I felt mingled pity and disdain for my prey — threw them all back, gasping, bleeding, yet they bolted for the depths in a flash, hurrying back toward the life I had interrupted. I toyed with the puffers, watched them inflate soft white bellies, gleaming, pearly. They squawked in protest. sometimes, a spot of blood where i removed the hook. They all went back to the water. my canal, my lover — a cool finger of brackish life.
Later, I gave birth to a child, paid for my pleasure, all that fishing, all that lust. The child’s father held my hand, blinking in the shadows, gazing in mute stillness at the bloody pink and white body, as she opened her tiny mouth to swallow us both. Her gums, naked yet as hold-fast as iron bars. She felt the air upon her skin and screamed her agony, her ecstasy, her freedom. She stared into my eyes, then swallowed my heart. She breathed and sucked and smiled sweetly in her sleep. Her first cat will be black, and she will bolt from my life as quickly and painfully as she entered.
I will never stop wanting a lover. The need satisfied will spin a chain, a golden chain rattling in the dark. I am terrified by my own strength. I sleep, I wake, I begin again. twirling life, twirling death, dancing in my room like a madwoman. My cat watches, crouched to spring, her eyes thin slits of light. Someday, she will swallow me. My lover’s eyes create of me a woman possessed. Spirit of the feline.; needles waiting in black velvet. Swollen flowers meet, and cannot part; he is mine.
Filed under prose poetry