poetry – Page 2

A poem I like:

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

Frank O’Hara’s right as rain. It’s not what you do so much as who you do it with.

“O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.”
– W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening”.

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.” – Mary Oliver, Wild Geese.

michaelrecycles:

vaginabubbles:/inside of out by soheir

“You know, you’re very pretty,” that guy from my frat said as we waited for drinks.

I chuckled and looked over my shoulder at him, “that’s it? You’re not terribly poetic, you know.”

“Oh, come on, Ivy,” he feigned dismay. “I do science. I don’t do overtures. You want a metaphor, fine? You’re as pretty as a Diels-Adler reaction.”

“A what?”

“A Diels-Adler reaction. It’s when…” From here, he explained something scientific that went completely over my head. Noticing my confusion, he cut himself off and said, “it’s really pretty. There. There’s your metaphor.”

I moved up closer to the bar and shook my head, “that’s a simile.”

“Okay, Ivy, okay, a simile,” he placed his hand on my hip. “You’re pretty like a barium cloud.”

“That’s another simile."

"It’s beautiful, I promise,” he said and used his free hand to grab me a drink.

I smiled, “I’ll take your word for it.” I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

I guess we all have our own sorts of poetries.

I’ll admit part of me swooned when you referenced Mauss. But part of me almost felt violated.

I sometimes feel too well-known when people read the same books as I. I feel like they have a part of me that way and I, by extension, have a part of them by knowing what they’ve read. I start to associate them with the work. They become part of it

It’s not the same with movies. There’s just something about books.

But that’s the very spirit of the gift, isn’t it? You give me part of yourself and I’m indebted. I give you some of me and you’re in my debt. And you know how I feel about power exchanges.

It’s funny to remember you as you were before you existed, subtle visitor. You know how I’ve suffered getting accustomed to you.

“Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm.”

– W. H. Auden.

“O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you;

As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,

Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.”

– Walt Whitman

“so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.”

– Pablo Neruda

“When shall we learn, what should be clear as day,

We cannot choose what we are free to love?”

– W. H. Auden, Canzone.

I wonder how these words leap out at him when he looks at the page. The process of him finding his own poetry and feeling in the books he reads is beautiful. The words are beautiful, too.

tylerknott:

I remember
us.
Beautiful
and
exhaustless
we loved.
Both hands
full of
life,
we loved.

-Tyler Knott Gregson-