Remember

I remember
hiding, crying,
cowering, screaming,
begging God to end my life

I remember
my disappointment
in waking each and every day
and how I cursed his name, in anger

I remember
so many years
wasted in despair
as I died a little each day

I remember
the day I was freed
badly frightened I was
that there was nothing left of me

I remember
falling in love
and finally feeling
that I truly am alive

I remember
what I was before


Remains to be Seen

We dress the boy in an orange cap
and show him how the gun is held.
He looks at his hand.

He likes five women, one in black
and one in yellow, whitey,
pinky, and the naked one.

In all his stories he loses his heart.
We do not tell him that the truth
is just the future, that he’s born

to die, and the love of the lovely
can kill. But we believe it;
he is beautiful, and at the movies

he is what we watch. His eyes
are fixed, his hair still


Recurrence

We shall have our little day.
Take my hand and travel still
Round and round the little way,
Up and down the little hill.

It is good to love again;
Scan the renovated skies,
Dip and drive the idling pen,
Sweetly tint the paling lies.

Trace the dripping, pierced heart,
Speak the fair, insistent verse,
Vow to God, and slip apart,
Little better, Little worse.

Would we need not know before
How shall end this prettiness;
One of us must love the more,
One of us shall love the less.


Recollections of Our Native Valley

Know ye not that lovely river?
Know ye not that smiling river?
Whose gentle flood,
By cliff and wood,
With wildering sound goes winding ever.
Oh! often yet with feeling strong,
On that dear stream my mem'ry ponders,
And still I prize its murm'ring song,
For by my childhood's home it wanders.
Know ye not that lovely river?
Know ye not that smiling river?
Whose gentle flood,
By cliff and wood,
There's music in each wind that blows
Within our native valley breathing;


Reason says love says

Reason says, “ I will beguile him with the tongue.”; Love says,
“Be silent. I will beguile him with the soul.”
The soul says to the heart, “Go, do not laugh at me and yourself.
What is there that is not his, that I may beguile him
thereby?”
He is not sorrowful and anxious and seeking oblivion that I
may beguile him with wine and a heavy measure.
The arrow of his glance needs not a bow that I should beguile
the shaft of his gaze with a bow.
He is not prisoner of the world, fettered to this world of earth,


Reason has Moons

Reason has moons, but moons not hers,
Lie mirror'd on the sea,
Confounding her astronomers,
But O! delighting me.
. . . . .
BABYLON - where I go dreaming
When I weary of to-day,
Weary of a world grown grey.
. . . . .
GOD loves an idle rainbow,
No less than labouring seas.


Raw With Love

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
I won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
I won't blame you,
instead
I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room


Rationale

Youth, you say. What of it?
I could say I was as fair
and handsome as a hero.
But I was always plain. I hated
and loved much as a young man.
Once, I had a preference for women,
to hate and love them ceaselessly
rather than avoidable young men.
That came gradually with my riving.
But who’s to say the ungainly
pursuit of young ephebes
wasn’t as daft and ardent
as the chase after hetaerae.
Much time was wasted in the hunt,
much in bewailing its necessity,
the rest in eating, drinking and sleeping.


Pages

Subscribe to RSS - love poetry