Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
The Loneliest Job in the World by Tony Hoagland
As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?,
you are completely screwed, because
the next question is How Much?,
and then it is hundreds of hours later,
and you are still hunched over
your flowcharts and abacus,
trying to decide if you have gotten enough.
This is the loneliest job in the world:
to be an accountant of the heart.
It is late at night. You are by yourself,
and all around you, you can hear
the sounds of people moving
in and out of love,
pushing the turnstiles, putting
their coins in the slots,
paying the price which is asked,
which constantly changes.
No one knows why.
you are completely screwed, because
the next question is How Much?,
and then it is hundreds of hours later,
and you are still hunched over
your flowcharts and abacus,
trying to decide if you have gotten enough.
This is the loneliest job in the world:
to be an accountant of the heart.
It is late at night. You are by yourself,
and all around you, you can hear
the sounds of people moving
in and out of love,
pushing the turnstiles, putting
their coins in the slots,
paying the price which is asked,
which constantly changes.
No one knows why.
It Is Enough to Enter by Todd Boss
the templar
halls of museums, for
example, or
the chambers of churches,
and admire
no more than the beauty
there, or
remember the graveness
of stone, or
whatever. You don’t
have to do any
better. You don’t have to
understand
the liturgy or know history
to feel holy
in a gallery or presbytery.
It is enough
to have come just so far.
You need
not be opened any more
than does
a door, standing ajar.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Monday, July 28, 2014
The Situation by Tony Hoagland
When the pain was fresh
for a while the problem got very clear.
and the clarity constituted a kind of relief
as if the problem had withdrawn
to watch what you would do.
But after a while the clarity began to fade,
and three days later you couldn't have articulated
precisely what the problem was,
and three days after that you forgot
that there even was a problem,
and your old way of thinking resumed.
You're just a citizen
of your own familiarity
who can't remember himself in a different way.
You go along and every now and then
the path jumps out from under you.
And you have learned to expect this upheaval,
as much as that is possible.
One might say it is with a kind of fidelity
that you keep making your mistakes,
and then renewing them,
as if you were following a sign that says,
This way to freshness.
for a while the problem got very clear.
and the clarity constituted a kind of relief
as if the problem had withdrawn
to watch what you would do.
But after a while the clarity began to fade,
and three days later you couldn't have articulated
precisely what the problem was,
and three days after that you forgot
that there even was a problem,
and your old way of thinking resumed.
You're just a citizen
of your own familiarity
who can't remember himself in a different way.
You go along and every now and then
the path jumps out from under you.
And you have learned to expect this upheaval,
as much as that is possible.
One might say it is with a kind of fidelity
that you keep making your mistakes,
and then renewing them,
as if you were following a sign that says,
This way to freshness.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
One Man at a Time by Tracy K. Smith
I take a man in my arms
And my eyes roll back,
Like a doll that needs
To be sat up. The world
And my eyes roll back,
Like a doll that needs
To be sat up. The world
Is dangerous. Look
What we do to one another,
As if nothing but having
Will sustain us. Not
What we do to one another,
As if nothing but having
Will sustain us. Not
The having, but the taking.
I want, I want. You,
Then me. The struggle
To give everything away.
I want, I want. You,
Then me. The struggle
To give everything away.
Those times it’s not love
That resides there, is it,
But a lunatic colt,
Hoof to plank all night
That resides there, is it,
But a lunatic colt,
Hoof to plank all night
Till the door gapes wide.
As though something
Deep in us must be tapped,
Rooted out. And so we try,
As though something
Deep in us must be tapped,
Rooted out. And so we try,
Slowly at first, like prowlers,
Until we arrive at certainty,
And that part of us quickens —
In panic? In joy? We fight back,
Until we arrive at certainty,
And that part of us quickens —
In panic? In joy? We fight back,
Eyes open, but blank, blind,
Choking on it, again and again,
Until it curls back
And we believe it is gone.
Choking on it, again and again,
Until it curls back
And we believe it is gone.
It’s the loneliest work there is.
We do it thinking it better
Than the loneliness even of war.
But look at the wreckage.
We do it thinking it better
Than the loneliness even of war.
But look at the wreckage.
There was one man I couldn’t resist.
He carried himself like the leader
Of a small nation whose citizens
Whispered about his extravagant wife
He carried himself like the leader
Of a small nation whose citizens
Whispered about his extravagant wife
And brewed their own beer
In basements hung with forbidden flags.
His hands were rough. Like the hands
Of a mechanic. When they touched me
In basements hung with forbidden flags.
His hands were rough. Like the hands
Of a mechanic. When they touched me
I hummed and whirred like a radio
Tuned to disaster. When he bent down
To fasten his shoes, then kissed me
Quickly on his way back up,
Tuned to disaster. When he bent down
To fasten his shoes, then kissed me
Quickly on his way back up,
Clarity settled in the room like dust
Or a layer of soot.
Or a layer of soot.
Dickhead by Tony Hoagland
To whomever taught me the word dickhead,
I owe a debt of thanks.
It gave me a way of being in the world of men
when I most needed one,
when I was pale and scrawny,
naked, goosefleshed
as a plucked chicken
in a supermarket cooler, a poor
forked thing stranded in the savage
universe of puberty, where wild
jockstraps flew across the steamy
skies of locker rooms,
and everybody fell down laughing
at jokes I didn’t understand.
But dickhead was a word as dumb
and democratic as a hammer, an object
you could pick up in your hand,
and swing,
saying dickhead this and dickhead that,
a song that meant the world
was yours enough at least
to bang on like a garbage can,
and knowing it, and having that
beautiful ugliness always
cocked and loaded in my mind,
protected me and calmed me like a psalm.
Now I have myself become
a beautiful ugliness,
and my weakness is a fact
so well established that
it makes me calm,
and I am calm enough
to be grateful for the lives I
never have to live again;
but I remember all the bad old days
back in the world of men,
when everything was serious, mysterious, scary,
hairier and bigger than I was;
was what I hated, feared
and was excluded from:
Hardly knowing what I did,
or what would come of it,
I made a word my friend.
Muy Macho by Tony Hoagland
I can't believe I'm sitting here
in this dark tavern,
listening to my old friend boast
about the size of his cock
and its long history,
as witnessed by the list of women
he now embarks upon, enumerating them
as a warrior might recite the deeds
accomplished by the family spear,
or like an old Homeric mariner might
go on about the nightspots
between Ithaca and Troy.
The bar tonight has the feeling
of a hideout deep inside the woods, a stronghold
full of beer and smoke,
the tidal undertow of baritones and jukebox
punctuated by the clean, authoritative smack
of pool balls from the back.
It's so primordial,
I feel my chest grow hairier
with every drink, and soon
I'm drunk enough to think
I'm also qualified to handle
any woman in the world.
You can talk about the march
of evolutionary change,
you can talk about how far we've climbed
up the staircase lined with self-help books
and sensitivity exams
but my friend and I,
we're no different from any pair
of good old boy Neanderthals
crouching by their fire
a million years ago,
showing off their scars and belching
as they scratch their heavy, king sized balls.
I know that every word we say is probably a stone
someone else will someday have to
kick aside,
-still, part of me feels privileged,
belonging to this tribe of predators,
this club of deep-voiced woman-fuckers
to which I never thought
I ever would belong;
part of me is more than willing to be wrong
to remain inside the circle of this
conversation,
-to hear the details, one more time,
of how she took her shirt off, smiled,
and then they did it on the floor.
Even if the roof were falling in,
even if the whole world splintered and caught fire,
I would continue sitting here, I think,
entranced-implicated, cursed,
historically entwined-
another little dinosaur
stretching up its neck and head
to catch the last sweet drop of drunken warmth
coming from the ancient, fading sun.
We can't pull ourselves apart from it.
We don't really believe
there is another one.
in this dark tavern,
listening to my old friend boast
about the size of his cock
and its long history,
as witnessed by the list of women
he now embarks upon, enumerating them
as a warrior might recite the deeds
accomplished by the family spear,
or like an old Homeric mariner might
go on about the nightspots
between Ithaca and Troy.
The bar tonight has the feeling
of a hideout deep inside the woods, a stronghold
full of beer and smoke,
the tidal undertow of baritones and jukebox
punctuated by the clean, authoritative smack
of pool balls from the back.
It's so primordial,
I feel my chest grow hairier
with every drink, and soon
I'm drunk enough to think
I'm also qualified to handle
any woman in the world.
You can talk about the march
of evolutionary change,
you can talk about how far we've climbed
up the staircase lined with self-help books
and sensitivity exams
but my friend and I,
we're no different from any pair
of good old boy Neanderthals
crouching by their fire
a million years ago,
showing off their scars and belching
as they scratch their heavy, king sized balls.
I know that every word we say is probably a stone
someone else will someday have to
kick aside,
-still, part of me feels privileged,
belonging to this tribe of predators,
this club of deep-voiced woman-fuckers
to which I never thought
I ever would belong;
part of me is more than willing to be wrong
to remain inside the circle of this
conversation,
-to hear the details, one more time,
of how she took her shirt off, smiled,
and then they did it on the floor.
Even if the roof were falling in,
even if the whole world splintered and caught fire,
I would continue sitting here, I think,
entranced-implicated, cursed,
historically entwined-
another little dinosaur
stretching up its neck and head
to catch the last sweet drop of drunken warmth
coming from the ancient, fading sun.
We can't pull ourselves apart from it.
We don't really believe
there is another one.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Patience by Tony Hoagland
“Success is the worst possible thing that could happen
to a man like you,” she said,
“because the shiny shoes, and flattery
and the self-
lubricating slime of affluence would mean
you’d never have to face your failure as a human being.”
There was a rude remark I could have made back to her right then
and I watched it go by like a bright blue sailboat on a long gray river
of silence,
watching it until it disappeared around the bend
while I smiled and listened to her talk,
thinking it was good to let myself be stabbed by her little spears,
because I wanted to see what I was made of
besides fear and the desire to be liked
by every person on the goddamn face of the earth—
To tell the truth, I felt a certain satisfaction in taking it,
letting her believe that I was just a little bird
opening my mouth and swallowing
the medicine she wanted to administer
--a mixture of good advice combined with slow-acting poison.
Is it strange to say that there was something beautiful
in the sight of her running wild, cut loose in an
epileptic fit of telling the truth?
And anyway, she was right about me,
that I am prone to certain misconceptions,
that I should never get so big or fat that I
can’t look down and see my own naked dirty feet,
which is why I kept smiling and smiling as she talked--.
It was a beautiful day. I felt like crying.
I knew that if I could succeed at being demolished,
I could succeed at anything.
to a man like you,” she said,
“because the shiny shoes, and flattery
and the self-
lubricating slime of affluence would mean
you’d never have to face your failure as a human being.”
There was a rude remark I could have made back to her right then
and I watched it go by like a bright blue sailboat on a long gray river
of silence,
watching it until it disappeared around the bend
while I smiled and listened to her talk,
thinking it was good to let myself be stabbed by her little spears,
because I wanted to see what I was made of
besides fear and the desire to be liked
by every person on the goddamn face of the earth—
To tell the truth, I felt a certain satisfaction in taking it,
letting her believe that I was just a little bird
opening my mouth and swallowing
the medicine she wanted to administer
--a mixture of good advice combined with slow-acting poison.
Is it strange to say that there was something beautiful
in the sight of her running wild, cut loose in an
epileptic fit of telling the truth?
And anyway, she was right about me,
that I am prone to certain misconceptions,
that I should never get so big or fat that I
can’t look down and see my own naked dirty feet,
which is why I kept smiling and smiling as she talked--.
It was a beautiful day. I felt like crying.
I knew that if I could succeed at being demolished,
I could succeed at anything.
Beauty by Tony Hoagland
When the medication she was taking
caused tiny vessels in her face to break,
leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks,
my sister said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.
After all those years
of watching her reflection in the mirror,
sucking in her stomach and standing straight,
she said it was a relief,
being done with beauty,
but I could see her pause inside that moment
as the knowledge spread across her face
with a fine distress, sucking
the peach out of her lips,
making her cute nose seem, for the first time,
a little knobby.
I’m probably the only one in the whole world
who actually remembers the year in high school
she perfected the art
of being a dumb blond,
spending recess on the breezeway by the physics lab,
tossing her hair and laughing that canary trill
which was her specialty,
while some football player named Johnny
with a pained expression in his eyes
wrapped his thick finger over and over again
in the bedspring of one of those pale curls.
Or how she spent the next decade of her life
auditioning a series of tall men,
looking for just one with the kind
of attention span she could count on.
Then one day her time of prettiness
was over, done, finito,
and all those other beautiful women
in the magazines and on the streets
just kept on being beautiful
everywhere you looked,
walking in that kind of elegant, disinterested trance
in which you sense they always seem to have one hand
touching the secret place
that keeps their beauty safe,
inhaling and exhaling the perfume of it—
It was spring. Season when the young
buttercups and daisies climb up on the
mulched bodies of their forebears
to wave their flags in the parade.
My sister just stood still for thirty seconds,
amazed by what was happening,
then shrugged and tossed her shaggy head
as if she was throwing something out,
something she had carried a long ways,
but had no use for anymore,
now that it had no use for her.
That, too, was beautiful.
Monologue for an Onion by Suji Kwock Kim
I don’t mean to make you cry. I mean nothing, but this has not kept you From peeling away my body, layer by layer, The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit. Poor deluded human: you seek my heart. Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine Lies another skin: I am pure onion--pure union Of outside and in, surface and secret core. Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot. Is this the way you go through life, your mind A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth, Of lasting union--slashing away skin after skin From things, ruin and tears your only signs Of progress? Enough is enough. You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed Through veils. How else can it be seen? How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil That you are, you who want to grasp the heart Of things, hungry to know where meaning Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion-juice, Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to You changed yourself: you are not who you are, Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins. And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart, Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love, A heart that will one day beat you to death.
July 25, 2014: Bedtime Contemplation
deprivation
inflates
the value
of everything
on its perimeter
(except more of itself)
unless
more of less
is what
is sought
#caveatemptor
Friday, July 25, 2014
Bits of Tracy K. Smith
"When a man his size can meet
Your eyes for just a blip of time
And send a thought like SHINE
SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE
Straight to your mind. ______,
I want to believe you. Want to feel
Your will like the wind before rain.
The kind everything simply obeys,
Swept up in that hypnotic dance
As if something with the power to do so
Had looked its way and said:
Go ahead."
#dontyouwondersometimes
"Each word is a wish, each phrase
A shape their bodies ache to fill—"
By Heart by Carol Ann Duffy
By Heart
I made myself imagine that I didn’t love you,
that your face was ordinary to me. This was in our house
when you were out, secret, guessing what such difference
would be like, never to have known your touch,
your taste. Then I went out and passed the places
where we'd go, without you there, pretending that I could.
Making believe I could, I tried to blot out longing,
or regret, when someone looked like you, head down,
laughing, running away from me behind a veil of rain.
So it was strange to see you, just ahead of me,
as I trailed up the hill, thinking how I can't unlearn
the words I've got by heart, or dream your name away,
and shouting it, involuntarily, three times, until
you turned and smiled. Love makes buildings home
and out of dreary weather, sometimes, rainbows come.
Carol Ann Duffy
Felt Sense Prayer
I am the pain in your head, the knot in your stomach, the unspoken grief in your smile.
I am your high blood sugar, your elevated blood pressure, your fear of challenge, your lack of trust.
I am your hot flashes, your cold hands and feet, your agitation and your fatigue.
I am your shortness of breath, your fragile low back, the cramp in you r neck, the despair in your sigh.
I am the pressure on your heart, the pain down your arm, your bloated abdomen, your constant hunger.
I am where you hurt, the fear that persists, your sadness of dreams unfulfilled.
I am your symptoms, the causes of your concern, the signs of imbalance, your condition of dis-ease.
You tend to disown me, suppress me, ignore me, inflate me, coddle me, condemn me.
I am not coming forth for myself as I am not separate from all that is you.
I come to garner your attention, to enjoin your embrace so I can reveal my secrets.
I have only your best interests at heart as I seek health and wholeness by simply announcing myself.
You usually want me to go away immediately, to disappear, to sleek back into obscurity.
You mostly are irritated or frightened and many times shocked by my arrival.
From this stance you medicate in order to eradicate me.
Ignoring me, not exploring me, is your preferred response.
More times than not I am only the most recent notes of a long symphony, the most evident branches of roots that have been challenged for seasons.
So I implore you, I am a messenger with good news, as disturbing as I can be at times.
I am wanting to guide you back to those tender places in yourself,
the place where you can hold yourself with compassion and honesty.
If you look beyond my appearance you may find that I am a voice from your soul.
Calling to you from places deep within that seek your conscious alignment.
I may ask you to alter your diet, get more sleep, exercise regularly, breathe more consciously.
I might encourage you to see a vaster reality and worry less about the day to day fluctuations of life.
I may ask you to explore the bonds and the wounds of your relationships.
I may remind you to be more generous and expansive or to attend to protecting your heart from insult.
I might have you laugh more, spend more time in nature, eat when you are hungry and less when pained or bored, spend time every day, if only for a few minutes, being still.
Wherever I lead you, my hope is that you will realize that success will not be measured by my eradication, but by the shift in the internal landscape from which I emerge.
I am your friend, not your enemy. I have no desire to bring pain and suffering into your life.
I am simply tugging at your sleeve, too long immune to gentle nudges.
I desire for you to allow me to speak to you in a way that enlivens your higher instincts for self care.
My charge is to energize you to listen to me with the sensitive ear and heart
of a mother attending to her precious baby.
You are a being so vast, so complex, with amazing capacities for self-regulation and healing.
Let me be one of the harbingers that lead you to the mysterious core of your being
where insight and wisdom are naturally available when called upon with a sincere heart.
I am your high blood sugar, your elevated blood pressure, your fear of challenge, your lack of trust.
I am your hot flashes, your cold hands and feet, your agitation and your fatigue.
I am your shortness of breath, your fragile low back, the cramp in you r neck, the despair in your sigh.
I am the pressure on your heart, the pain down your arm, your bloated abdomen, your constant hunger.
I am where you hurt, the fear that persists, your sadness of dreams unfulfilled.
I am your symptoms, the causes of your concern, the signs of imbalance, your condition of dis-ease.
You tend to disown me, suppress me, ignore me, inflate me, coddle me, condemn me.
I am not coming forth for myself as I am not separate from all that is you.
I come to garner your attention, to enjoin your embrace so I can reveal my secrets.
I have only your best interests at heart as I seek health and wholeness by simply announcing myself.
You usually want me to go away immediately, to disappear, to sleek back into obscurity.
You mostly are irritated or frightened and many times shocked by my arrival.
From this stance you medicate in order to eradicate me.
Ignoring me, not exploring me, is your preferred response.
More times than not I am only the most recent notes of a long symphony, the most evident branches of roots that have been challenged for seasons.
So I implore you, I am a messenger with good news, as disturbing as I can be at times.
I am wanting to guide you back to those tender places in yourself,
the place where you can hold yourself with compassion and honesty.
If you look beyond my appearance you may find that I am a voice from your soul.
Calling to you from places deep within that seek your conscious alignment.
I may ask you to alter your diet, get more sleep, exercise regularly, breathe more consciously.
I might encourage you to see a vaster reality and worry less about the day to day fluctuations of life.
I may ask you to explore the bonds and the wounds of your relationships.
I may remind you to be more generous and expansive or to attend to protecting your heart from insult.
I might have you laugh more, spend more time in nature, eat when you are hungry and less when pained or bored, spend time every day, if only for a few minutes, being still.
Wherever I lead you, my hope is that you will realize that success will not be measured by my eradication, but by the shift in the internal landscape from which I emerge.
I am your friend, not your enemy. I have no desire to bring pain and suffering into your life.
I am simply tugging at your sleeve, too long immune to gentle nudges.
I desire for you to allow me to speak to you in a way that enlivens your higher instincts for self care.
My charge is to energize you to listen to me with the sensitive ear and heart
of a mother attending to her precious baby.
You are a being so vast, so complex, with amazing capacities for self-regulation and healing.
Let me be one of the harbingers that lead you to the mysterious core of your being
where insight and wisdom are naturally available when called upon with a sincere heart.
Spell by Carol Ann Duffy
Yes, I think a poem is a spell of kinds
that keeps things living in a written line,
whatever's lost or leaving-lock of rhyme-
and so I write and write and write your name.
that keeps things living in a written line,
whatever's lost or leaving-lock of rhyme-
and so I write and write and write your name.
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Wednesday, July 23, 2014
The Blue Robe by Wendell Berry
How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know
each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to met, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now
we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake
at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know
each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to met, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now
we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake
at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
The History Of The Human Body by Edmund Berrigan
You're so yourself sometimes I'm sure it's you
in front of me & not the nothing I have use
to see or that mostly I'm looking for like looking
& waiting to be that other. Clarity & perfection
are like, of no use to an incomplete mind, mind
killed to prove the other, that is our beauty.
I can't see you but I can see myself wanting
you, to write that down, which I have done in
the past & had you more in front of me. You had
just been there, it had been hours, & your
energy is bright a hundred feet away, that its
image is strongly etched years later, making itself
my double between this double couch & coffee
table, good for any moment I want to see you.
in front of me & not the nothing I have use
to see or that mostly I'm looking for like looking
& waiting to be that other. Clarity & perfection
are like, of no use to an incomplete mind, mind
killed to prove the other, that is our beauty.
I can't see you but I can see myself wanting
you, to write that down, which I have done in
the past & had you more in front of me. You had
just been there, it had been hours, & your
energy is bright a hundred feet away, that its
image is strongly etched years later, making itself
my double between this double couch & coffee
table, good for any moment I want to see you.
Whatever You Thought Your Body To Be by Bridget Lowe
Whatever you thought your body to be,
vessel for hubris, trapdoor to the soul,
sight for sore eyes or heavenly vision,
rack of flesh with nothing to offer at all.
A temple of the holy ghost, a ghost,
black hole for dogs to bury their bones.
The dog in heat who offers herself,
the offering itself or the heat alone.
Place for men to lay their heads and die,
plank of wood that leads to the sea.
Whatever you thought your body to be,
see it out walking, forgetting your name
and the presents you gave it for all its birthdays
and the ways that you loved it and didn't.
vessel for hubris, trapdoor to the soul,
sight for sore eyes or heavenly vision,
rack of flesh with nothing to offer at all.
A temple of the holy ghost, a ghost,
black hole for dogs to bury their bones.
The dog in heat who offers herself,
the offering itself or the heat alone.
Place for men to lay their heads and die,
plank of wood that leads to the sea.
Whatever you thought your body to be,
see it out walking, forgetting your name
and the presents you gave it for all its birthdays
and the ways that you loved it and didn't.
Tigers by Eliza Griswold
What are we now but voices
who promise each other
a life neither one can deliver
not for lack of wanting
but wanting can't make it so.
We hang from a vine at the cliff's edge.
There are tigers above
and below. Let us love
one another and let go.
who promise each other
a life neither one can deliver
not for lack of wanting
but wanting can't make it so.
We hang from a vine at the cliff's edge.
There are tigers above
and below. Let us love
one another and let go.
Monday, July 21, 2014
You by Carol Ann Duffy
Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your
name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright
syllables
like a charm, like a spell.
Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame’s face fierce licks
under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.
I hid in my ordinary days, in the long days of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me
as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.
Genesis by Billy Collins
It was late, of course,
just the two of us still at the table
working on a second bottle of wine
when you speculated that maybe Eve came first
and Adam began as a rib
that leaped out of her side one paradisal
afternoon.
Maybe, I remember saying,
because much was possible back then,
and I mentioned the talking snake
and the giraffes sticking their necks out of the
ark,
their noses up in the pouring Old Testament
rain.
I like a man with a flexible mind, you said
then,
lifting your candlelit glass to me
and I raised mine to you and began to wonder
what life would be like as one of your ribs-
to be with you all the time,
riding under your blouse and skin,
caged under the soft weight of your breasts,
your favorite rib, I am assuming,
if you ever bothered to stop and count them
which is just what I did later that night
after you had fallen asleep
and we were fitted tightly back to front,
your long legs against the length of mine,
my fingers doing the crazy numbering that comes
with love.
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