Posts tagged ‘poetry from voices’
Let the Buyer Beware
Let the Buyer Beware
Let the buyer beware.
It was in winter
that he met you, and
shyly touched you:
frost-whitened trees, and grass,
disconsolate…
he gave you a stone,
a small flawed agate.
(“I look for them on the beach,”
he said. “It gives me
something to do.”)
It was in spring, perhaps,
that he loved you, though
he never claimed it.
You took him
or he took you…
the definition troubled you,
at times.
It was in sered summer
that he left, still
saying nothing of love.
Weeds in the socks,
in the hose…and if
you could (somehow)
clean the heart, too?
Let the buyer beware.
truth
truth
it seems long since
i accosted the
strange-eyed god.
and, o, the gifts
that he gave me:
all
have brought some joy, and all some pain:
but the worst–the best–
is sight.
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There will be a lot of repetition from earlier posts in the ‘voices’ category, which is an ancient poetry manuscript. I lost the computer copy of the ms. that I cut each poem I posted from. Pardon the sloppy grammar.
dawn
dawn
having woken from some dream
of holding you, still
tasting your mouth’s imprint, clasp
recorded by warmed skin’s cooling, i
sit and shiver, waiting for dawn.
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Yes, actually, that’s real. Some partings are occasioned by necessity, and any bitterness (apart from deities and the like) directed not at self, not at her–not at life–no, the bitterness was the experience itself. “No blame.”
For John Varley
For John Varley
Immersed once in silvery
reflections (how smooth
this metallic mask, this muse!)
in that cavern
(resting on quicksilver
on Mercury),
entranced, i was moved
(but we were trapped, and oxygen
was short) to touch your breast,
recreate that fearsome beast.
(I thought my desire
‘incestuous.’)
Did you sense my momentary
desire
behind my suit’s silvery mask?–you offered,
and i rejected.
How odd to find later that both desire
and rejection
were directed at myself!
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This is based on one of his short stories, and genetic doppelgangers, spare bodies meant to be kept mindless, and…I won’t give you any more of it. He was fascinated by the whole thing for quite a while.
anagrams
various anagrams
1.a rusted plow
half-buried in sand;
hexagrams.
2.i saw you
paused in your flight
before your fall,
Daedalus.
3.i have not yet forgotten
her touch, subtle
as desire.
4.clasp slipped, hand cold:
the touch of truth.
5.flight encircled, ended,
at return–
silence.
That word
cannot be said.
meanings(II)
meanings (II)
meanings. this land
is drenched with meanings.
but the dead
are merely dead.
for missy
for missy
at the shore once
i watched your hair fly
in the surf’s windy spray
i had not touched you
all that day: was it
anger or a game? (honestly, i can’t
remember…)
we had been becalmed
by strange coilings of mist
that seemed to echo
inner, unspoken fancies
(a rat ran through the surf:
you didn’t shriek, but merely
looked, and wouldn’t let me
kill it)
…it was our last day, alone
in the fog’s-sphere of sight…
the next day you disappeared.
if you were ever there, that is:
perhaps, conceivably, you
were only a fantasy, born
of the wind, the fog, the spray.
.
for S. Delany
for S. Delany
tormented and wounded
in her words’ tearing lurch, he
be-sandalled and be-spectacled
had wandered the tired
the metalled street
and tasted the stale fog/perhaps-smog
of three o’clock of a weekday
three o’clock in a greyed City morning
considering various
heroes, villains, and other fools,
having
run from the worded woman
who skewers him at times
with her merest glance
but has birthed these various
worlds, these unlikely
(and moving) protagonists; when
i stiffen in my last breath,
surely,
i shall see Kid Death
story
STORY
that quiet
desperation fills you, for
a moment
as you listen to his story (the old
drunk’s story)…
you realize
he is as you, save
for face, name, a few
vagaries…
but he is old, and you
are horny, and
a whore on the corner
beckons. If not
love, lust, and the quick’ning
of the blood
(you can understand the ones
who regard
sex as exercise, though knowing
them blind)
that bespells you…
so you leave him, you
stagger away.
It is odd that
all that of meaning
in that day’s passing
remains
is his story, and
(his incongruous, his beguiling)
his smile.
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The line between truth and fiction is quite narrow (if existent) at times.
