12 posts tagged “avs”
let us take our proper clothes off. oh, let's. it's so nice
to see each other all skin and breathing weight. wrists free from
cuff links, backs exposed and unready for the myriad of things
we usually prepare for. you can say that you are
a yellow cab, all dirty from the most recent hailstorm. maybe then
i might believe you. i can say that i am a red, red rose, free finally
for the picking; for the i-love-you, i-love-you-not moments. maybe then, you
would believe me. we could prance around like perfect fools,
preserved by this certain intimacy. come on, let's take it all off. then we can go
to the restaurant across the street and pretend we
are happy to be this way, ourselves.
if
the way i think about you would
amount to anything, the red moon
would quit its job for a night. it would slide down as
a woman to the pub you usually frequent.
it will be wearing a dress, red and appropriate, with
one leg exposed to the resting world. after ordering a
strong drink, it would look around and see you
alone this time, a rare occurence. it would think of
you lonely for someone, maybe me. then the moon
would be lost in its own reveries, as if it were human, as if it also
has suffered a loss as seemingly insignificant as we have.
"When I said: I am bound to you forever
Here's what I meant: I am bound to you forever." - Bound, Suzanne Vega
"Strange how these streets are devoid of you. Maybe, now, peace."
He Said Discipline is the Highest Form of Love
All three girls were in love with their music teacher. At a lesson, he told one: You wear your heart on your sleeve. Then the other came in, dark hair parted in the middle like a black book. She had the longest most promising fingers, but he did not love her. The third girl did not come until the next day. In the night she dreamed that he spread his arms out behind her and then wrapped his left arm to hers holding the instrument, and folded her fingers so they touched the strings. His right arm crooked with her arm holding the bow. They were just one violin.
Every time she practiced after that she felt his limbs on her limbs, his breast at her back, like a man-shadow cast by her small girl body. An hour would go by like an arrow. That's what was hardest: what love did to time. The Brahms fell apart like a glass. His shoulders over her shoulders. Even when she grew up, which happened in a night, and was happy, she could still conjure him, this love skin.
This whole petal of him.
When she came to her lesson the next day he tapped the lip of her music stand with a baton, tic-tic-tic, four-four time. She felt—a bit, a bit of his ankle in her ankle, and then the knee above that, floating. She wondered what he was like with the book-haired girl. She knew he loved those long fingers. Maybe that was enough. In time.
--Beckian Fritz Goldberg
When behind a young man on a bus, she finds herself staring at his neck. The urge to touch it is almost overwhelming!
Then he scratches it, as if he knew.
*****
She visits an area of a town full of secondhand-clothes stores. She smiles stupidly in a bakery, unable to supress the thought that everyone is wearing everyone else's clothes.
*****
When 6 pm hits, you will notice the faint laugh lines resting on the edges of her mouth.
*****
I cannot tell the time when she is away.
Just walking around
John Ashbery
What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is not a name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,
An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,
Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again
That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.
------------------
from avs, today.
for A who says please before killing anyone
He tells her, all this is not about you My stories my poetry Some days, I write her letters She responds and it makes me lose my mind for a time I cry when she says she remembers me when she eats cold noodles You know she is in Korea studying I tell her about you She is not pleased Oh yes you are a likely substitute The slant of your neck when you bend down to tie your laces reminds me of hers Your eyes are hers teeth mouth candy ears But here it is, my hand over yours, however you would like to take it I'd like to think my heart is a carrot I will not pity you when I turn my back and say I don't know if I'll ever see you again Parting is never romantic It makes you feel oddly like snow written on then eventually smoothed over to make room for a new writer I will never omit never die for you never ever ever
When he gets this way, his hand brushes against hers. He says how's this for romance the moon you and overpriced coffee Love like everything else is a marketing tool. She smiles. This is the most love she's had in years.
HUWAG KA SANANG MAGAGALIT
Huwag ka sanang magagalit
kung sasabihin ko
na hanap-hanap ka
ng aking mga tula.
Huwag ka sanang maiilang
kung tuwing umuulan
isip-isip ko ang init
ng ating katawan.
Ngayon, butas lamang
sa langit ang lahat ng bituin,
Ngayon, sukatan lamang ang buwan
ng layo mo sa akin.
Anumang kuwento
ang simulan ko’y
sa iyo rin nauuwi.
Sa bawat aklat
na aking buklatin
naroroon ang iyong tingin
Alam ko: may sarili kang tanong
na dapat sagutin; may sarili kang misteryo
na dapat harapin.Huwag magmadali: panahon ngayon
ng liwanag at sari-saring dilim;
Oras ng sugat at lamig at ng
paurong-sulong na pagpapaumanhin.
Ngunit Tess, mahal,
pinakamatalik kong kaibigan,
huwag ka sanang magagalit
huwag ka sanang maiilang
kung aking sasabihin
na tuwing humihinga ako
naaamoy kita,
na tuwing pumipikit ako,
ikaw ang nagiging umaga - Ramon Sunico
you agree, right? some of these lines should be screaming red.
Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror or my own selfish death
outstared me. And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside of myself,
you would not know that the worst of anyone can be,
finally, an accident of hope.
I tapped my own head;it was a glass,
an inverted bowl.It is a small thing
to rage in your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you, or your house
or your kitchen.
And if you turn away
because there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange or a strange sun.
Not that it was beautiful,but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.
This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place, my dear,although your fear is anyone's fear,
like an invisible veil between us all
and sometimes in private,
my kitchen, your kitchen,
my face, your face. - For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further, Anne Sexton
