Of flares, of flowers (poems, poetry)

8/2/2019 Of flares, of flowers (poems, poetry)

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OF FLARES , OF FLOWERS

Loving one face, and the soul that animates it

142 erotic sonnets

March 15-April 15, 2012

by

Gregg Glory

[Gregg G. Brown]

Published byBLAST PRESS324B Matawan AvenueCliffwood, NJ 07721(732) [email protected]


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TheFall 11

Two,WeTwo 12

Blips 131)Myeyesarewearyoflookingforlovers 16

2)Thisisthefirstmorningofthefirstday 17

3)Mybackpackisweightedwithliliesandcandles 18

4)Iknowyouminimallyonly 19

5)Letusplayagamethen,youandI 20

6)Magnoliapetalsonatank...falllightly... 21

7)Itsenough.Toplaywithscarvesinsummerair 22

8)Whatistime,andhowisitourown 23

9)Thefiercebeingyouwouldhavespringfromyou 24

10)IfCezannepaintedyou,whatvillagewouldyoube 25

11)Theblossomsthatstoodoutonthebranch 26

12)Calmaspondsletyourselfbetoday 27


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13)Dancingmakesamotionofitsown 28

14)Iwouldhaveyougrowinvisible 29

15)Returntomenaked,Iwouldhaveyouso 30

16)Youhavesuchasubtle,neutralscent 31

17)Lovemefiercely,thoughnipplesbleed 32

18)Youopenforme,aluminousanemone 33

19)Eachnightmymantrasoundsyourname 34

20)Erosroseshedredshredsofpetals 35

21)Whenthetonguedartstarttotheaspicplace 36

22)Thesoftmuskofyourpaledownyneck 37

23)LoveLovethundering,loveunderlined 38

24)Idtradeprayerbeadsformillstones 39

25)Whyislovemymeasureandmymeans 40

26)Whowereyoubeforeweenteredthetrees 41

27)Outofthebittersnow,Icamerattlingin 42

28)Gountiltheearthliesbetweenus,pregnant 43

29)Thesoftfallofflares,offlowers,oncetheorgasms 44

30)Foryou,Iwouldbelittleastherain,andfallonyou 45

31)Lovehasnourisheduslikeabeetroot,red 46

32)Whatisthisenigmathathasruinedmysleep 47 33)Howonegoesonwrestlingwithdestiny 48

34)Myheartopensandcloses,acarnalrose 49

35)WhosefacethisisIthinkIknow 50

36)Everydaythepoetsatdownandthought 51

37)AdamandEve,bytheirgardenwallsurrounded 52

38)Ikissyourblindstatue,fervidwhileyouwait 53


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39)Howcantonightcomewithoutyouhere 54

40)Thewindinsistednothing,cametomyface 55

41)WhenIcreatemyloveforyouinmyheart 56

42)HowshouldIwriteapoemoflove 57

43)AlldaylongIhavefollowedthissaddog 58

44)Icanthaveyoueveryday,canI 59

45)Somuchtimehasgoneby,slidingandwashing 60

46)Loversalwaysmeeteachothertwice 61

47)Youaresleeping,ahillwherenight-snowfalls 62

48)Alittlepaleshywetness,alittleslit 63

49)Ifyoumustgotoday,shedyourskin 64

50)Sayitonceandbest,unlikethelark 65

51)Griefisnotpartofus,partofthisloving 66

52)Venusisbendingnowabovethebow 67

53)Inyourmouththereglowsaholyrose 68

54)Youcometomeencasedinashelloflight, 69

55)Yourfeetarewoundeddoveswalkinghome 70

56)Youcomecarryinggiftsnootherknows 71

57)Yourheartscomposedofgreymourningdoves 72

58)Blackbutterfliescrowdthewhitechurchwithshadows 7359)Someonehaswrittenyourbodyonthegrass 74

60)Whenlovespillswhiteonhercloudybreast 75

61)Afterthewhiteheathasleftthepen 76

62)Thelampburnsinthecornerofmyroom 77

63)Wedriveonbeautifulwhiteroadsuntil 78

64)Thoughpackedwithjoy,Imstarvedforjoy 79


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65)InyouIdiscoverthesea,amlostinwaters 80

66)Youreyesaretwomoondrops,twobowls 81

67)Ourwingsarestraightout,ourwingtipsjust 82

68)InyouItastemydeath,yourmouththeopen 83

69)Whenyoukissmemyfacechanges 84

70)Arewesowingdaughterswhenweseesaw 85

71)Youhavefilledmethewayajugofwineisfilled 86

72)HowoftenhaveIturnedthepagesofyourbook 87

73)Letushuntamongsmallnessesforlove 88

74)Mysteriouslyeachdayflaresanddisappears 89

75)Cometome,cometome,wildrosewhogrows 90

76)Athornyladderwrapsthemountain 91

77)Death,IdontgetitDeathseemslikeafake 92

78)Wereheretocelebratealifeofdust 93

79)Burymestandingandpennyeyed 94

80)Iamcut,andinmyheartisplanted 95

81)Wevebeenkissingtillourlipsarechapped 96

82)VoyeursatthewallofAbelard 97

83)Iwouldbreakoveryourbodylikeawave 98

84)Itieyoutothechairandfeeltherough 9985)Dear,Iamjealousofyou,thewayapearl 100

86)Desireriflesme,disordersmyinnards 101

87)Life,Iholdyouupandlookthroughyou 102

88)Itrytogotosleep,butcanonlythink 103

89)Beinghere,meetingyou,mylife,well,mylife 104

90)Life,theysay,occursinthecaesuras 105


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91)Iamblind,blinded,alostmoleescapedout 106

92)Yourhandsprepareanightforustogether 107

93)WhenyouabidebesidemeIamcalm 108

94)WhenIamfeelingtroubledandataloss 109

95)Sheisacompassneedlegoinground 110

96)Youheldmyhandandheldmebacktomake 111

97)Haveyoueverwantedtofly 112

98)Lovecomessneakylikethecoyote 113

99)Becausemydreamsknowyou,Idonot 114

100)Breaklikeanoak,orkeepfaithforever 115

101)Shamelessismymistresswetlycaught 116

102)Forthreedatesyouremainedamermaidtome 117

103)Myloveisnotariver,butitis 118

104)Otherconstellationshaveallflashedtoash 119

105)Filemedowntoanunbearableessence 120

106)Yourloveslockedupinherintricatecastle 121

107)Inthemist,intherain 122

108)Playthesistrumsoftly,softly 123

109)Ashypnoticasalivingfanofcoral 124

110)Love,sogreatanemblem,adivinestthing 125 111)IthoughtIknewjustwhattodowithyou 126

112)Greysanatomyandallthatcrap 127

113)MiscreantTimehasspelthistroublesplain 128

114)Lovecannotchoose,butknowsitischosen 129

115)Althoughmyjoywithpainisblistered 130

116)Deathwilltakeyou,andIwillblessyou:Go. 131


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117)IfIwerewithoutwhoeveryouare 132

118)Tellme,doeslovehavesorrowforitsmarrow 133

119)Deathholdsloverswhoforgeteachother 134

120)Sittingtheresosaucilythoughtful 135

121)ImnotquitesureIquiteknowquitehow 136

122)Whatcansummeraddtowhatourwinter 137

123)Iliketowatchyoutrythenewwordsonyourtongue 138

124)TheworldispackedtightwithKreonsandMedeas 139

125)IburnthroughmuseslikeEstesrockets 140

126)Wouldyoubuymeabackyardfullofdreams 141

127)Youhadgrownquietinasnowyfield 142

128)Wheredothebirdsgowhenitrains 143

129)Idonotloveyouthewayfireloveswood 144

130)Atsunset,howitallrunsawayfromone 145

131)Loveisacorpse,nothingbutacorpse 146

132)Thatnightyousangtomeshinesinmenow 147

133)Shiveryasadelicatedartfromablowgun 148

134)Everywherepeoplearelookingattheheavens 149

135)Ipullyouopenanddividetheloaves 150

136)Lovecomesapart,likeshards,inthehand 151137)IfIamliving,Imustbeloving 152

138)Cryingoutinmywounds,Idonotfindyou 153

139)Aninfinityofneedlesstickinmythumb 154

140)Letloveslittlesunbeamintoyourheart 155

141)Putyourhandinthethornyconflagration 156

142)Inthetrippingtickoftimeitstaken 157


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TheNightJanitor 158

OdetoanEarlobe 159

LedaAfterLunch 160

TheUnnameable 161


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THE FALL

Ah, the small

Cavity

That takes my all....

No gravityCould keep me down

When I smell

Your downy mound....

I fell, I fall!


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TWO , WE TWOIts just a little while

Weve been two, we two.

Too long myself a solitary,

Self-possessed as a dromedary

And landscape as bleak.

Too, too long my lonely hills

Slanted all drift, sift and seethe.

No wet roll or rill, no river

Rushed oceanward open-armed,Dissolving all the rivers crazy

Hermit-cackle to one tongues

More marmoreal, vast

Unknowing murmur.


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BLIPSI am desperate to love you, to know you,

Like a bride who burns off her wedding dress,

Like lips waiting, misshapen, to kiss.

Kisses fell out of us like water falls,

Bursting to earth and deafening the onlookers!

When we kissed, we could hear the sea crashing around us.

But where are they now, those slippery kisses?Whats left of their vast wetness?

No child has grown between us.

Even a puddle leaves its residue of mud,

Some softening of the way

Despite whatever volume of traffic.

Stirring the syrup of your sweet sweet life,

Letting the licks insist their way into me, inside me,

Surely my lips remain sticky?


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How many feet have been here before us? Every foot.

Every pace of the path is hard with old passages,

old passions.

Every route is known; no star blinks undiscovered

Except by us, two blips on the periphery,

Elliptical with longing, our lips chapped by the long

wintering over,Too stiff and dry to even whistle!

Our veined and florid maps are still tucked in ourbackpacks.

Our tents are not yet ready to unroll with sleep.

My eyes keep blinking, keep looking, no matter howdark the way.

Theres still so much to see, I think,

When your hand brushes mine under the pine trees,

And the sound of our walking fades into the background,

And I close my eyes to breathe.

If love is, then love is what happens

When you forget where youre going.


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SONNETSAssist me, some extempore god of rhyme; for I am sure I shall turn

sonneteer. ~~ Shakespeare

All my life my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name. ~~

Andre Breton

Desire too cosmic and too close to name

A vibrant nothing and a tortured shame.

My all, my fallwhich in one syllable Ill tell

If you beside me, dear, will ride

the black thunders to Hell.


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3My backpack is weighted with lilies and candles.

I cross argent mountains and oceans to reach you.

I throw a tasseled rug before you

And stare into wide eyes no longer dull,

Passing the carafe until dawn fills us

With rock-candy colors, and our smiles are tired

From talking too animatedly wired

While night cloaks his blue frills around us.

How long have I walked to find your country?

How long had I slept till I dreamed of you?

How long has my desire kept me swimming?

Toward you, toward you, my dear, I am swimming!

My breath breaks the surface seeking shores of you!Coming home to your eyes, I sing Tis of thee!


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4I know you minimally only,

The way a head knows hair: an invisible halo,

The way a sleepwalker knows life: fully lonely

As a blind hand walking across a mirror.

I know you only as a keel knows water:

I divide and unite your surfaces endlessly and seamlessly,

Never knowing the wet of your green interiors.

But I know you will know me completely.

You will know me without any deceit,

For deceits too weak to withstand your winds

The hurricanes that live in your laughter

Announcing: It is she! And I'll stand

Open to you totally, a book without a binding,

And our eyes will share tears simple as water.


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6Magnolia petals on a tank... fall lightly...

As they fall... on everything, being

The pink delirious things they are.

Philosophers in their overcoats construe

More meaning than meaning thinks its due,

Being the grey barristers of the real

They be. But you, sweating in your spring attire,

Visit devastation on the sweet magnolia tree,

Declawing its blossoms... and trimming the wings

Of birds as they return to their warm abode.

For you the poet unfolds his ode.

For you the tank stutters in its tracks.

For you the petals in my stark heartFall in flattering loveliness... for a start.


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7Its enough. To play with scarves in summer air

Is enough. The weaving and the waving

Of their colors in the fresh summer air

Is enough. There is no more to be waved

Or to be woven than what has already occurred.

No past is prologue when the moments all.

Look how brightly the colors wave and curve!

The summer air is here, and that is all.

The summer air is heavy in the mind,

The mind is old and full of dusty thoughts:

How this becomes that, how the child crawls into the man;

Colors wave and curve, and I calculate their sine.

Ai! You cover me with a hundred scarves uncaught,

And the summer air is bright with omen.


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8What is time, and how is it our own?

I will not recognize the clock hours maybe,

So bee-like diligent to my task I am,

Or, grown slowly thoughtful looking out to sea,

Time slips by lightly that would govern me.

My time feels most my own when you and I

Together spend the gold moments given:

Pointing at Venus in her drape of sky,

Or doubling-up downrightwith laughter shaken.Or when moony looks imbue you, dear,

(If Im not mistaken) the way a clear

Pond becomes clouded with the thought of rain

Or a mother disappears into her childs pain.

We keep time most when we give all our own.


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9The fierce being you would have spring from you

Will yet spring. The life your life trembles to beget

Is waiting in your snowy body curled.

She shall from your eyes drink the honied fire,

And her breath your breath will yet sustain,

Inspiring in her unborn eyes a thousand worlds.

The woman who will step like brightness

Too-bright to look at, dances in your likeness

When before the mirror you test your tresses.

This phantom of your future self shall come yet:

And every diamond be her birthright,

And every river flutter like her caress.

Oh little mother frowning brownly so,

Let one small smile be born upon you now.


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10If Cezanne painted you, what village would you be?

What pair of Monets haystacks, soft,

And glistening in sunlit serenity?

To me, too close, you are a crosshatch, crossed

With empty diamonds and abrasive lines,

A certain blotchey rosacea of the soul

Yanking your kite-string down from the divine;

From the eternal you wither into the small.

Here is where we meet, knees beneath the table,

The traffic staticy, the world unstable

That goes zagging through the fog beyond us.

In our discussions no accordance

Were as different as figs, as cracksIn the Old Masters, two needles in the haystack.


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11The blossoms that stood out on the branch

Now blow along pavement wet with runoff;

Fall gave way to winter, and winter now to March

When early flowers crowd and then fall off.

It is almost too much of the coming thing,

This blizzard of blossoms after blizzard in earnest

Before the azalea really get going

Such hazardous blooming should be in jest.

Almost too much... with the excited whitesBoating toward oblivion in the gutter

Where the storm drain lurks, all appetite,

And the dark beyond the grate is utter.

Theres much to consider while we sit as one,

Touched blonde by the sun,but no longer young.


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12Calm as ponds let yourself be today.

Leadeth thyself to lie down, shut off the TV,

Hear the million bees murmur rumor of plenty

While kids race at recess in unharried play.

Peace, peace be on your sensitive eyes,

Your fingers steady as new radial tires;

Put up your feet, youre off the highwire,

Each exhale sails another balloon to the sky....

May contentment come and tuck you in,Pull the clean sheet right up to your chin,

Sing lullabies and lieder until you believe

No one you know will ever again grieve.

Today take this prayer, and light a tea candle;

Whatever comes your way you can handle.


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14I would have you grow invisible,

Shrink down and disappear like blotted tears,

Like wine consumed in hungry drops, or winter

Snow become fantastical in melting March,

Leaving the green hillside patched with wet.

Do not change your petals for a branch

Curved low with many weighted fruits;

Burn, flash to ashes, and let those ashes blow

Till no grey shred of your greatness waits

Behind, till all colors that compose you are undone.

Become some transparent, wingy thing

They tell about in churches when they sing.

Take all you are with you when you go.Still, I cannot unknow you. This I know.


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16You have such a subtle, neutral scent,

Like a show-pony before shes ridden hard,

Before good use turns her breathing scant

And she makes a wanton break-out toward the stars

That leaves the sturdy fencepost rent.

Cleanly we begin, easy in our reins and chaps,

Taking the wide acreage at a simple cant

Until the rocking saddle slaps.

Then I cleave to you and cleave in twain

The sweaty mystery of your sex;

Molten mists of joy and pain inextricably mix.

Raucous across the finish line,

We pant and pause and smell as one

To what rank stench our hard ridings come.


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17Love me fiercely, though nipples bleed

And lips need stitches where your lips have passed;

Love me fiery until loves pyre is dead,

The bonfire soaked, the man-in-the moon undressed.

The heat that creeps through lovers veins

Ignites silently in eyes and furtive looks

Until a shared surrender in the brain

Incinerates discretion, undoes every hook.

Do not wait for the duration of a zipperBut love me instantly, as steam loves the cold air,

Hot as torches in huge candelabra.

Burn me until for burning there is no cure,

For no love comes when lusts coal-red is gone:

No mother-love, no nurses hand, no one.


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19Each night my mantra sounds your name

Which in going round undoes itself in sound

Until all syllables go circling the same.

Night-owls hoo you, dark winds whistle you, clouds

Spell out what letters tout you, only you

My one constant in a world without a goal

(Now you are found), and all my self is lost

In going round, beading prayers of your name.

Crickets crick you, water laps you lucidUntil all oceans echo only on your shoals;

Every face is featureless, featured the same;

Each mouth is mute that sighs not out your name alone.

This mirror-maze of gladness has no end:

All surfaces reflect you, only you.


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22The soft musk of your pale downy neck,

Apple-dappled depth of orchards wealth,

Wreathes through our low-hung boughs of breath

As we share warm whispers and shining cheeks.

The bed about us is tumbled as the Andes,

White-peaked bedlam of a stormy ocean

Frozen when exhaustion paused our oars again

And breath returned to calm our pantings.

Soft the musk of your downy neck, my peach.

Soft the teased traceries of tongue and tongue

Vying redly with teeth and lips and gums

To bite the splendid fruit our loves unleash.

The endless hours move in one slow sigh

Opening on a downy dawn as warm as thighs.


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24Id trade prayerbeads for millstones

If stone could grant what lips have wished

And manifest for my solitude

All the weight of kissing I have missed,

Blessing my bed with your beatitude.

All the burdens of the awkward ox

Id shoulder as my own if only

Hours, not days, remained till I unroll your socks

Next to mine, white stripes on the lonely

Divan pushed back and piled with busted boxes.

Here I wait in a penitents house,

Whose hearts all roses and runaway kites,

Whose curse is timewho has kissed eternityAnd tossed her socks next to mine.


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33How one goes on wrestling with destiny!

Trying so hard to throw away one beautiful thing

That has fluttered to your feet like litter, a free gift.

Here I am, hunched over the trash can, wrestling,

Uncomfortable, angry even, with what has cometo me freely:

Priceless platinum the world has thrown after me,

Chasing me down with free armfuls of ecstasy

While I try so hard to throw away one beautiful thingMiserably, miserably with my angel wrestling.

Life is not a medicine to swallow, it is a feast!

Just open yourself to being blessed, you will see!

The trash will throw itself away, only you will be left

Standing, shining like an angels wings,

You, who tried so hard to throw away one beautiful thing.


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38I kiss your blind statue, fervid while you wait.

Your lips are perfect, poised; mine insistent,

Never satisfied, lonelier with each deep pressing,

Imagining the dark with you undressing,

Dropping your bra on the carpet, panties flung

Higher than the highest note a soprano sings.

But you, being a statue, remain composed.

Hands, once warm as bread, lie gracefully reposed.

Take my spark, my soul, my all! But do not stay so cold.

I keep kissing your coldness, growing old.

I hope I am not too rude to one not quite alive,

One toward whose loveliness my whole life has fallen,

Leaving my own dead pedestal behind, praying my passionIs love enough to bring you back to life.


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44I cant have you every day, can I?

My stomach will get swollen, sour, and tight,

As if candy-gorged on Halloween night.

I cant have you every day, can I?

You would blow through your lips Oh, alright.

But, in your heart, youd be bored and uptight.


Beating a drum too often can blister a thumb.

How much more gently, then, when loving someone?


You cant be hungry every single day, can you?

I want you so bad, but you must tell me what to do.

When you doubt that I would be with you,

Look into my eyes, and see: All I see is you.


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46Lovers always meet each other twice.

First, in animal excitement, pupils wide,

Stamping and pawing and rubbing their sides,

They leap into each others mouths; its nice.

Later, if they continue consuming each other,

A day comes when their hands are on the same handle

And they turn the wheel together, humbly,

And their eyes, once wild and hungry, grow tender.

It is this tenderness that holds the baby

In the womb; the womb thats made of tender netting.

It is this tenderness that weaves the nest,

That tells us yes instead of maybe,

That gives tonights moon the light its shedding.It is in this tenderness you and I may rest.


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47You are sleeping, a hill where night-snow falls.

No longer do you laugh and become a cloud,

Cotton pinched between the nurses able fingers,helping all,

Letting the blood of others enter you, clottingTheir wounds or applying alcohol before the needle.

Now you are purely sleeping, your breath apples,

Your great shaggy hair-river up in a mop.

Tell me, am I remembered in your dreams?

There where you fly above the world without a cape?

Am I a one-eyed giant crunching bones?

How I would like to crouch down and enter yourdream-tunnels

And patter in the water after you, running.


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54You come to me encased in a shell of light,

Light dripping from your wet fingertips

Until swept sparks gather on the mat like sweat,

A slow swirl of flame rising to our hips

And we in the center of this focused rose

Touch like torches our incandescent arms

And fall into the whirl of liquid pulses

Beating to our hearts bruised alarms.

Here in the center of light is love

And silence. Only your face floats above

The burning candle end; only your eyes and mine,

Dear, in all the ardent fire remain.

Only here, in the lights heart ofis,

The earth releases her captives, and we rise.


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58Black butterflies crowd the white church with shadows.

Secretly now I speak, who had been plain before

Fear and pain had come and nailed my door.

I am lost in a world of truculent shadows.

I only approach whats real in whispers,

I am mute before the others.

All that was solid is now thrown shadows.

The black butterflies land on my heart and fold their wings,

My tongue forgets to sing.

Love has webbed my ardent hands with shadows.

My hands, once full of eloquent caresses,

Are folded now in wings of blackness.

Do not follow me into this twilight,

Love, for after such a dusk must come the night.


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60When love spills white on her cloudy breast,

And stormy brow blows clear of stormy Os,

And achingAhs breeze to their windy rest,

I, new-calm, quiet to calms no-moan.

The placid window opens to a sky

Where I float alone, unclouded now,

And listen to my lying mistress, fly-

Ing in her far Afghanistan, unfollow-

Ed by harrying lust, the insistent prick-

Ling that turns moist Maybe to Hurry, yes!

O howwe seeded loves tempest to light-

Ning desire!which lies beside, a deflated gust.

So we lie apart who had shared one heartAnd, pant for pant, had played the stormfronts part.


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61After the white heat has left the pen,

The tower come to grief, and all our loving

Ceased, there will be time for turtle-doving

And all the public petting couples plan.

After the bed has ceased creak-quaking,

And reddened knees and slipping toes uncurl,

There will be time to be just boy and girl

Laughing at our nasty pelvic snaking.

After the sweet tipping, love and shoveOf two bodies burning to be one,

The shouting out to God and His holy son,

There will be time to count all the stars above.

But now I say, looking over at you again,

Let stars remain unnumbered till times end.


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62The lamp burns in the corner of my room,

Evilly-eyed. Somehow, today, my happiness

Is playing hide-and-seek with me gloomily.

Newspapers pile up. The rooms a mess.

Only over the bed is there a memory

Of wings, scarlet happiness, ecstasies

We shared on the fitted sheets of ivory.

Those afternoons come to me now. Too clear.

My head rattles like a tin can full of pebbles:The pebbles are hard eyes of yesterdays Ive seen,

From the mildly annoying to the incredible.

Remembering you, our joy, makes me sadderthan Ive been

In a long time, a long row of odd days,Ragtag and worsted-ended, without your golden rays.


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63We drive on beautiful white roads until

The lake is a single blue eyelid;

Strange fish leap, straining their scarlet gills,

Keeping their watch on humankind.

We are so young, we people of the earth,

The other creatures dont understand us

With our prayers and warsbut they and we both

Mount the lovers excited crucifix.

The turtle, the bluejay, and even the jellyfish

Sting and huddleand skim through the mighty sky

When we lie down together as I wish.

And you, too, wishing and wanting and sly,

Cozying over with your pearl skin and fur dish,

The hollow in your side where we meet and say goodbye.


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64Though packed with joy, Im starved for joy.

My ecstatic skin illuminates acres, the starving fire

Of joys consumed by their own desire!

For you I have devoured every joy,

Jammy and seedy as raspberries.

For you I am made hungry as the sea,

Drinking every river to the lees.

To my gullet goes all treasure, all junk!

Greedily I gorge on diamonds and rust,Old anchors, the amber delicacy of sunsets.

All goes down to my soul with a clank.

For you, I eat empires and dandelions equally

For you, I have made myself open and empty,

Starved to taste, with my being, all of your being.


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vvvv 80

65In you I discover the sea, am lost in waters,

Smelling the bitter brine that floods from my cock,

The sharp salt exfoliates of our Maker

That shiver hoarsely in the sweat of our fuck.

With you, I grab at the reeling gunwales

And almost fall overboard each day;

Every night, biting smiles from the dark, we assail

Each other with our wolf-bodies, and we bay.

Below you, I am drowning, my hands wideAs I look up to love the last uncertain light

And the green water breaks me inside,

And theres only you at the surface, only you in the light.

Let me live this adventure, dear woman,

In your body, by your side, as a man.


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vvvv 82

67Our wings are straight out, our wingtips just

Touch as we move motionless over the whole

Earth as we glide without diving over the whole

Map of creation, silent and colored-in, just us.

What do we see from the great height of our love?

Millions crawling over the earth and over each other, larvae

Feasting on their mothers corpse in a red furrow.

Theres more to this earth than our hovering.

Id rather fly beside you, lashing our hook-beaks,

And starve on the air currents like a dying leaf

Than dive for the fattest lamb, the most ripe beef

If we must walk among those whose lives are crooked.

Cant those fools see that love is a straight line?Love stretches straight from your taut heart to mine.


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vvvv83

68In you I taste my death, your mouth the open

Corners of my grave, damp clay ochre and dun;

Your arms like gravediggers hold me round

And lower me helpless to the sucking ground.

Here, in your mouth, live the roots of many things,

Many ripening vines; incantations and songs;

Buried in you are deep emeralds, mines of nickel and lead,

Rivers of ore coursing among the buried.

So much comes so deeply from touching you,Breathing you in; even in this final suffocation, you

Remain dark and compellingof you I can see no end,

Although the earth you are composed of has an end.

You are measureless, endless and supreme

A depth beneath which no man may dream.


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vvvv 84

69When you kiss me my face changes, like a face stamped on

a lollipop when its licked. Gradually the face smears to a

flatness and disappears, and the tongue gradually becomes

the color of the face that is no longer there. So you are

slowly becoming the color of my soul, and I am forgetting

my face lick by lick. Lick by lick, I begin to resemble the

smooth personless joy of a red balloonuntil (perhaps

deliberately, in a fit of hungry ecstasy) you bite through me

to the white sweet stick at my core. And no one knows meany more than the washed-up skeleton of a dead whale,

picked clean by diving gulls and rolling back-and-forth in

the acid waves.


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vvvv85

70Are we sowing daughters when we seesaw?

Is any throng of sons arising from our private aching,

The back-and-forth of our terrifying loving

That silences to shame the puma and the daw?

Is it enough to just be here and be just us?

Doesnt fairest nature desire fair increase,

Isnt your body a longboat full of empty seats

Where antsy children clamor, like on the bus?

Isnt there something in the flower of ourselvesThat desires to be plucked like the heavy magnolia,

Plucked and held up, despite the streaks of purplemelancholia?

Is it enough for love to just ask these questions?

Our fears exchange a look of blackest ice;A shiver comes, and then a kiss; it will suffice.


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vvvv 86

71You have filled me the way a jug of wine is filled,

Drop by drop your tears have shed: pale joy, dark grief

Replacing fear and solidude and sorrow with belief

Almost I could not believe, almost my wound

of doubting killedThe new true universe we two have willed.

Out of my sadness, shedding the black crown

In the alabaster dust at your feet, on my knees

I have made this pilgrimage through many trees,Out of the night dances on the wintry lawn,

Out of the first spring day arrived in streaks of dawn.

And now I am here, and you are here,

And we drink from the heavy clay jug weve been filling.

Night and day we drink to the dregs, and there, my silly,

We are empty and happy as a ring tossed in the air.


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vvvv87

72How often have I turned the pages of your book

Reading your braille nipples, commas round your mouth,

Your eyebrows the astonished parenthesis of a look

Damp delight engenders for us both.

I read in the firelight stirred by your fingertips:

How you yearn to be warm bread and warm earth

Rising and restless, the air whipping!

There are so many marvelous stories to touch

As I run my tongue across your fragrant words,

Swashbuckling over the mossy moat ofooh and aah

To reach the climax: castle, cave, treasure or fabulous bird.

And there in the dogeared dark of bed and book,

The phoenix erupts like a hydrant! Ah, fabulous bird!

And your eyebrows almost contain your fireworks look.


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vvvv 88

73Let us hunt among smallnesses for love,

The tapering end, held tight, of the elephants tail,

Or how a condors aiming wing ends in a single quill

They way your nose reaches me before your lips

from above.These little things, littler and littler,

The kindness one might extend to a mouse;

It is in these small wonders that we build our house,

You and I, meeting alone, thumb and thimble.

Notice the tininess of quiet,

The ballerina leaping in the barn by herself

So tiny a gesturean inchling elf

Who goes on tiptoe to view loves riot.

Prayerfully, we fold ourselves into bed,

Close our eyes, and dream the littlest dream in one head.


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vvvv89

74Mysteriously each day flares and disappears,

Stars are thrown over us in a glimmering net

And we swim in our dreams through an unforgettable wet

Until dawn ignites its sheet of crimson paper.

Everything goes up in the fire, daily; vagueness

Has my kisses mingle with others kisses;

In a week, my face is merging with the visage

Of a half-dozen half-remembered masterpieces.

When oblivion unplugs the phone and the line goes deadYour friends discuss the stranger whom they loved;

Who you were has come and gone like a matchsticks red;

Those who swore you oaths forget your voice.

Since you and I must succumb to such severe severing,

Lets play today as if today we were forevering.


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vvvv 90

75Come to me, come to me, wild rose who grows

ApartI climb the thorny mountain

And I tread the thorny path to know

The thorny secret of your thorny heart.

Bitter the wind and long, long the way

To come to the dancing brook, your fountain;

The thorny rock I climb both night and day.

And there at your root I slept, a day and night,

And dreamed a pilgrim dream that has not

Gone away: the little mountain rose, she bent

and said words my heart still hears: Come to me

Come to me, walker and stranger, come drink

Beside my rocks and my roots, come drink

My dreams and kiss the bitter thorn of me.


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vvvv91

76A thorny ladder wraps the mountain

As I stride to attend your musky rose;

I come for your bodys garden, mossy and open:

Of your musky skin, I breath the rose.

I climb the ladder as I climb you, daily

Heaving my weight up toward your unconquerable eyes,

My heavy regrets, my dank past, my disguises.

Hurrying, I plunge into the thorns. Ai!

Suddenly, the angry angels red-hot rapier is everywhere,

Hissing into my neck, my lungs, my sides,

Lancing the blue coil of my intestines.

Will loving you and climbing you leave me dying?

From the highest rock you bend, dusky rose;I attend your soft musks music, and I arise.


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vvvv 92

77Death, I dont get itDeath seems like a fake

When (right next to you) my eyes snap awake

Like blinds rolled up in the alert light of dawn.

Everyones always mooning over some grave,

Some president or lover or bloke awfully brave

At best I manage to stifle my yawns.

Microbes and cancers and blanks on the map

Steal time from their eyes theyll never get back.

Why dont they get wise and do what I do?

Building big monuments is hard on the back,

And who cares whats there on the blanks in the maps?

So why dont the world shut up and just love you?

Theyd see crystal-clear how Death was a fake

When (right next to you) their eyes snapped awake.


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vvvv93

78Were here to celebrate a life of dust.

Were born passing away, as we must.

Dying we crawl to our parents knees,

Choking clutch our holy rosaries.

Crippled we round the bases at stickball,

Hamstrung pitch pennies against the back wall.

We count our raises on fingers of bone;

The dying crowd cheers, but were still alone.

Nothing and no one can stop the sands shift-

Ing down the hourglass and over the cliff;

Were dead at our prayers, and dead at our song;

Dead in the mirror; dead all the day long.

When across the bed your kiss comes like a knife,

I open my mouth, I surrender my life.


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vvvv 94

79Bury me standing and pennyeyed,

A pagan and a fighter I have died,

Nor expect to be alive again

So loving you must have an end.

Although intimations came and went

Of a meaning more eternal when we kissed,

I kept to my convictions and now am spent.

Light a penny-candle if Im missed.

Dont imagine that from heaven I would frown

If you still cavort and canter like a lass;

Something there is that loves a clown,

And I loved you when I saw you last.

So leave a stone and raise a glass to me,

Who when he kissed you, kissed you; as it wasmeant to be.


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vvvv95

80I am cut, and in my heart is planted

A grafting of your luxurious bough

Some gesture you made, some grace half-granted

Rinsing kitchen mangoes beneath the faucet.

Your eyes were black and hungry, your mouth too,

As you shook out of your pants

Round the rickety chairs we wheeled, rich and slow,

A sweet molasses movement in our dance.

The mango juice oiled your open breasts

Olive-toned and slanted, and the green smell of tea

Rose wreathed from your hairI lost my breath

And rode your slipping hips for certainty.

And now from the grafted tree that grows,

I shake a thousand hours of our mangoes.


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vvvv 96

81Weve been kissing till our lips are chapped

And happy, our eyes hypnotized from a gazing-fest

That out-stared the sap in their sockets.

Too long weve lain with sex on the brain

And the groinoh, the groans!we must stop it.

We need to rest, shut up, get dressed,

And see if the blue world still rolls outdoors.

Sore as a sigh, we depart on our lark,

Creaking weak keisters to the car:

The movies, the mall, or Seaside Park?

We drive until five on our dutiful tryst

And ask: Did a longer day ever exist?

We laugh as we dash madly back to bedWhere we align half-divine and (half the time)

head-to-head.


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vvvv97

82Voyeurs at the wall of Abelard

And his heaving Heloise heard love made,

Forged from iron fires groaning hard

Where bellows hiss and the hot pokers laid.

Cleopatra paddling on her barge

Proffered pink enticements to Antony

While excited slaves looked on with eyes quite large

And the sinuous Nile slinked into the sea.

When Salome threw her seventh veil away

And shone before Herod as God intended,

Unashamed as sunshine at midday,

Even John the Baptist lost his head.

So ardent are our toe-to-toe romances,

Prudence peeps between her fingers at us!


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vvvv 98

83I would break over your body like a wave

Every night, over and over, over your back,

Your hair, dissolving into the shadows I crave

That inhabit the nape of your neck.

I would bear you distances to hidden sands

Like pirate booty, alone beneath the palm trees;

I would not share you, even with the moonlight,on our island!

To me you have come, to me remain. To me.

I open your heavy chest and count the treasures there:

Zion and Taj Mahal in a single body!

Your lips are memorable as a cut lemon;

Your tongue persuades me to loves duty....

Tonight I break upon you a million waysAnd break and break until my breaking stays.


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vvvv99

84I tie you to the chair and feel the rough

Of wood and soft of skin compete and play

For where my wet attention goes and stays,

Although the sports sniggered at as uncouth.

Still, there is a time to bring the rope and bind

The love-object to her astute pedestal

And grant her darkest wish therewithal

To feel assured that matings sting is blind.

I with she and she with he and they with them

Play a roundel merry Mozart could commend,

So difficultst to parse the beginning from the end

Until the music stops and draws the curtain.

I would tie you to me more gently, though:

Be thou the butterfly on which my breezes blow.


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vvvv 100

85Dear, I am jealous of you, the way a pearl

Is jealous of the moon.Vanity, my girl,

Has brought me singing here beside you

Although I am small as a childs first O.

Teach me your light, how you throw yourself

Over every roof and field, and all the items on the shelf,

Detailing the dust on the clock... even its handsyou enhance

Infinite and infinitesimal at once!

I stay stung inside myself like an eyeball,

Greedy to see, yet selfishly pearled as a shut shell.

How can I break open like a moon-gleam,

Traveling the nothing, and giving even dogs dreams?

Teach me your light; its depth, its height

I would crest with the sea-wave, and give lovers light.


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vvvv101

86Desire rifles me, disorders my innards,

Burns my arms black to helpless studs,

Untongues the eloquence of my familiar

And leaves my heaving soul standing mute, just there.

I didnt know I was shredding myself to tatters

Charging down alleys, checking trash, lookingfor what matters

Anything to which I could assign my desire,

The pilot light that nearly burned down the house.

I did not know until you came, plain

As a square of sunlight on the floor

Then I saw: how overwrought and strange my pain!

How simple to acquit desires rave for more.

Desires roar is nothing when love is,Which, fussless, overpours the brim desire desires.


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vvvv 102

87Life, I hold you up and look through you

Like a clear pane of ice skimmed from a puddle,

Hold you only a desperate moment in the muddle

Until my fingers go numb and you slip through....

Only a moment, and what I saw

Was the color and contour of conchs,

The sweet center of a womans haunch

Open and thirstyfor a mans peck, a lovers paw.

Life, if you have a meaning, what else

Is it? Today a man and woman are meeting,

Words pass between them like a sleet of bees

Until night finds them naked as a racing pulse.

Life, share with me all of your secret whispers.

Wife, kiss me with your fresh lips like cinders.


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vvvv103

88I try to go to sleep, but can only think.

Strange shades of death assault me,

Drown me in their inks, squids of the sea

Constricting the peaceful measure of my soul.

A tomtom is rapping in my awake ears

From inside the cork corridors of my skull;

Whatevers left of me is not my will,

Just this red repeat of sound that sears.

I watch the animated faces go byIn a silent film, every mouth sealed with cellophane;

Are they laughing haphazardly or crying out in pain?

I watch the animated faces go by.

The moon rolls into my room, a bloodshot eye.

We stare the night out. We do not blink.


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vvvv 104

89Being here, meeting you, my life, well, my life

Is feeling complete. I almost dont want

To jinx it by saying so much about my life.

Almost, too, I dont want what I want.

How can his be? We are two humans,

Alike as mirrors facing each other,

Same sets of hands, toes, same talk, same tongues, lungs

The same, and yet.... I feel your alien center out there.

Your pride and determination to teach well,

How love has sucked you up like a vacuum

And now you are afraid. All this I feel,

And myself going around humming Te Deum.

Being here, meeting you, my life, well, my life

Feels complete. And yet, almost, I dont want my life.


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vvvv105

90Life, they say, occurs in the caesuras,

The pauses when passions breath is breaking

Or the mired eye at dawn is mildly peering,

And lovers lie replaying their old overtures.

Life is whats happening when its not,

When nothing much is foremost on our thoughts,

A finger caught in some stray weft of webbing

While over Miami the blue moon is ebbing.

Life, elusive fish, is not captured when its caught,Its not the adding and subtracting of pensive thought

Or any other species of abstract thinking.

Life is just the waits between the blinking.

So long as I lollygag (between the birth pang

And oblivion) with youIm content to hang.


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vvvv 106

91I am blind, blinded, a lost mole escaped out

Of his long house, for now my home is in your self;

In you, my soul falls up out of myself

The way a lotus floats over its roots.

In you, I am so close to being air, to flying!

You pull my umbilical cord through my mouth,

And in my center forms a silver pool of truth;

Almost, in you, my me, my I, is dying.

We are together as the cords of a twisted rope.Together, we turn back from frogs to tadpoles;

Soon well be egg-sacks, then a single egg, pale.

We kiss with our mouths open as if saying Hope.

You, who have my sight, my life, my sighing,

Come be blind with me beyond our dying.


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vvvv107

92Your hands prepare a night for us together

Candles and glasses, the eats chopped and prepped,

How carefully, how thoroughly, I am in your debt!

The bed turned down, the rum-topaz light soft as feathers.

A hundred times I have walked around you, sighing,

While you hung up the moon and arranged the plates,

Preparing even the corners of our life until very late.

And all I can think to do is undress you, and kissyour feet, crying.

My gratitude fills me, like wetness in cactus

Dont let my sharp whiskers deceive you!

Inside I am sweet and full of grateful dews.

That you should live our life so intently.... Withoutpractice

You throw love everywhere like streamers froma spotlight,

And happiness explodes in me like a burst piata.


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vvvv109

94When I am feeling troubled and at a loss

For no other reason than Id forgot

My own reasons for getting too hot,

She comes to me with a cool compress

(And rustles near me in her silken dress)

And manages without managing at all

To manage away my worry with her skill

And save me from my own self-caused duress.

And for this aid I have no help to give,

None at all, but school my truant gratitude

To look on her with love,me, whose natively rude,

And petty too, and so condemned to live....

Then she comes again with her talk, her touch,

Her tender balm, making smooth the rough.


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vvvv 110

95She is a compass needle going round,

And seems in all her spin and waver

More like something lost than something found.

Still, how the blue point endeavors!

And will not be put off her trying harder

(No matter that shell earn no extra chevrons).

What lodestone rubbed to make her so endure?

Something there is perhaps in her being pinned

To house and job and child and filling the larder.

For round she goes, feeding us and filling bins

With fine fidelity for one so scattered,

So torn between her going out and coming in.

Still, she knows her North despite all hazard

As if loving us were all that really mattered.


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vvvv111

96You held my hand and held me back to make

Me stay, who would have walked on without a thought

To reach the ready bench past the woodland brake

And there sit content, and have no further thought.

You held me back, and pointed without a word

There, between the slant and screen of trunks,

A fox returned to her nesting brood,

Her mouth blooded, and in that mouth a skunk.

Such dedication had the young ones yip

And tear at the striped carcass, black and white,

Love had brought dragging for their sup

And kept the mother-skunk from her kits.

You held my hand, and may you alwaysBe so wise of eye and wise to natures ways.


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vvvv 112

97Have you ever wanted to fly?

There was a frog who wanted to fly

And got his chance. First, he was lonely,

And cried at the ponds edge in his great loneliness.

His voice was like a drum. Other frogs

Covered their ears. Dragonflies flew off in fog

To avoid the cacophony. What was the frog lonely for?

Ill tell you. He was lonely for the sky

Just that. Thats where his froggish dreamingwas tacked.

Low, low in his frog-throat, who knows why,

The great loneliness gathered, like the great

Tension of a bowstring pulled back.

And out of that came the frogs dark cry

Like a lovers lament. He was in lovejust that.


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vvvv113

98Love comes sneaky like the coyote,

Stealing hearts left trashed and discarded;

Love cannot enter a gate when guarded

For love is soft and secret as midnight smoke,

Easily spooked by a too-attentive hoot

Or too-oft remembrance of an antique hurt.

But let down pride and let down vigilance

And love like moss on every root will grow;

Love will come slinking by for kitchen scraps

With eyes as big as moons in a puddles overflow

Love will live on iffy maybes and a half-perhaps.

Once loves pennants pitched upon the parapet,

She waves her colors gaily, victorious in surfeit.


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vvvv115

100Break like an oak, or keep faith forever

Live sternly serene, if your ambition lives:

The oath of a bull is not the oath of a feather.

Love with your will, and not your body only,

The way virgins married Vesuvius alive

And died in a silence terribly lonely.

Condors mate with their wild kind on the crags

As sky and rock mate in ravening winter,

Their high crying caught in the winds brag.

Come take me, maiden, with your Amazon mind!

Come kiss lips till lips blaze and splinter!

Come ravish the man who climbs to marry your kind!

The oath of a bull is not the oath of a feather:

Break like an oak, or keep faith forever.


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vvvv 116

101Shameless is my mistress wetly caught,

Wily in her seeking freedom thence

Demure when spanked as though she would be taught,

Yet still runs wild at her third offense.

Who could teach much to such wantonness,

Frenzied to be free, when freed all frenzy still?

Unbidden, shell curl upon a lap to rest

All things all ways is her only will.

She charms at first with an off-hand gesture,Comes for pets, is damned attentive.

Your good opinion seems her only pleasure;

Next day proves her unretentive.

How can one instruct such a flitting wisp?

No way but enjoy each shimmer as she shifts.


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vvvv117

102For three dates you remained a mermaid to me,

Swimming away and flashing your tail.

I didnt even know if you had two legs, and the sea

Kept foaming right up to your navel.

When would I feel your slick body climb into bed,

Your clothes lumped in a disordered heap,

Your half half-sinking taking ballast aboard,

And you naked as a newly-sheared sheep?

Something was fishy, my little mermaid;

Was our romancing faux or spurious?

The course you set was cunningly laid,

And my suspicion kept me curious.

But then you swam up, and sailed home to my bed,

And wrapped your legs around my head.


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vvvv 118

103My love is not a river, but it is

In the river, flowing among the yeasty curls,

Wetting itself in the wavery spray and the spritz

Playfully as an otter with two balls.

My love is not grand like a church bell

Forged lovingly from parishioners pennies,

Calling in the blackclad faithful to solemnly kneel;

(But my love does have a tongue for you, Jenny.)

My love is not as vast as the Great PlainsMajestiesfertile and broad and deep;

But my love does peep like a prairie dog, is game

To pop up and play hide-and-seek.

My love is a funny sort of thing, and a small:

A paper plane thrown in a cathedral.


119/164

vvvv119

104Other constellations have all flashed to ash

Old photo-bulbs, popped and nude,

Heavens eons reduced to interludes

Since your starry being has come to pass.

I doodle the lines of your constellation, dotting spots

That limn your chin or trace your waist

With my hands and mouth, pausing at each place

To braise my pallor on your burning bodys hot.

My ardent lips come back bruised and burntAs burls, and tears shine hard where lust had lurked

Surprising eyes, and leaving me unsure how this works.

Loving is not loving that will not learn to hurt.

Now I lay me down on the grassy floor

And memorize stars that are all yours.


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vvvv 120

105File me down to an unbearable essence,

Pinch me tight like ground spices, and haul

My granular essence to your curious nose.

Inhale my sharpness; love is at the core.

It has taken me a long time to arrive,

A long time I soaked in loves tanning vat

Disputing causes, examining the sieve,

Adding up my love-lists like an accountant.

But now I am soaked, dunked, drenched, a whoreWholly open and wholly possessed;

I love all of you, your least eyelash adore;

I love you stripped, or bathing, or dressed.

Love is at my center, love up to the teeth;

Now love me tooquickor love must come to grief.


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vvvv121

106Your loves locked up in her intricate castle.

High, high the parapet! In the moat, a crocodile.

I slip into the black water anyway, the way

The moon slips into your mouth when you raise it, singing.

My desire for you has made me brave

Not brave to conquer, nor to save,

But brave to kiss you and to be kissed

Regardless of what the interference is.

Bold lions lean yellow in your feline eyes,

Crouched to kill with womanly surmise;

In your teeth, armies of ghosts lie interred

Ready to haunt and hiss at a word.

All this I dare who never dared before:

I throw my heart down at your gate on your farthest shore.


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vvvv 122

107In the mist, in the rain,

Comes illimitable pain;

Here your face remains a memory

Of insuperable agony....

We who had been lovers, closer

Than diodes anodyne and chosen

Now separate like trees in fog,

Dull white columns half-sogged

Until I and all I feel

Is insubstantial, ephemeral....

I myself a ghost

Invisible in mist, lost

Without you as my anchor, dear,

My source, my succor.


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vvvv123

108Play the sistrum softly, softly.

Her image glides all ghostly

When the refrigerator hums

And dead of night is come.

I am haunted by her now

Who knows the strength and hour

Of her presence, of her power

Oh ghost at once sweet and sour!

Illusory, frightful,

Hysterical, delightful,

The woman in the mirror

Haunts and appears.

On my shoulder like a parrot

She hops, my ghoul, my Pierrot!


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vvvv125

110Love, so great an emblem, a divinest thing

Like Himalayas beyond Himalayas aspiring:

So tall, so fierce, an Amazon from the moon

Standing on the porch between us now its June.

Love, remote beyond ebony pearls of Cathay,

Strolls by with baskets of daily laundry;

It sits knit in the pearl of purl one, purl two

As we lounge of an evening with pay-per-view.

Love, when I was ignorant and young,Lay locked in a castle beyond my tongue

Which knew not the secret keys of a kiss:

Holding hands in the rain, the nearness of bliss.

So long have I stood imagining wings

Who, knowing you, flies over everything.


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vvvv 126

111I thought I knew just what to do with you:

Keep you in a box on my Friday night shelf,

Feed you snickers and movies and romantic fluff

About stars in your eyes and kisses like wine

And other such fabulous stuff.

But, oh, how mistaken! My heart was taken

When your body spooned glued to mine.

My will swam away under a tidal wave

To tropic, Tahitian moons. I thought I knew

You, I thought I knew me. But, today,

I am a man lost at sea, the sea gorgeous,

A man on an island washing away under his feet....

I need you, in your wooden canoe, to come

And take me to wherever you came from.


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vvvv127

112Greys anatomy and all that crap:

Bodies blueprinted and expertly dissected,

Drawn and quartered from arse to cap

As that curious scalpel the eye directed.

No diagram can master what you are:

Lusty stardust fallen to our sphere.

Here, you present yourself humanly:

Swearing at the buckles on your mackintosh,

Spilling the last soggy bag of groceries,

Stamping your rain boots free of fresh slush.

Thats the you who you arewhose eyes see deep,

Whose breath is half roses when youre half asleep,

Whose kiss is integral, and whose calm arms are just

The skinsoft thing that wakes the whole of my lust.


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vvvv 128

113Miscreant Time has spelt his troubles plain

On papery forehead and chill cheeks eaten

By the wind. Lacing my sneakers at dawn,

I ran, once, and raced the wind unbeaten.

While still a boy by the barefoot pond,

I saw my face resolve past hanging fronds

Unlined by any lesson of the Lords;

All was still penny-a-wish and open hope.

Now past my zenith, on the far shore lodged,

Where snows heap up and the hillside steepens,

I reach weakly across the wrinkled gorge

To one who keeps my heart within her steeple.

Will you take this hand and creak on crutches?

Theres a place past the peak where the church is.


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114Love cannot choose, but knows it is chosen

To undertake all that love can endeavor:

Hurl rocks from the heights, or love you forever,

Whichever is hardest, more burning, more frozen.

One big love is better than any half dozen,

One Mississippi masters ten cataracts

Those, my lover, are simply the facts.

Love cannot choose, but knows it is chosen.

A hunchback haranguing the town with his bell,A lady pirouetting herself off a cliff,

Hamlet pondering Ophelias sweet If....

That man with the Nose who knows words all too well;

They all knew nothing, but one thing knew then

Love cannot choose, but knew love chose them.


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vvvv 130

115Although my joy with pain is blistered

And I choke on every luau larded at my feet:

Purple whortle-berries, vintage ofSan Griet,

Still I eat, still drink to life and leisure.

Each hike I take toward some higher good,

Each leap I make, induces some new seizure;

Each trial into undiscovered pleasure

Leaves a trail of bodies through the wood....

Still I trod, having found no higher GodThan duty to what beauty here appears

Leaves that come and go throughout the year,

Milkweed seeds drifting slowly from their pods.

Whatever cost our private Christmases incur,

Ill pay the pain, so long as you and I continue us.


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vvvv131

116Death will take you, and I will bless you: Go.

Not like demented Edgar shall I wander and weep,

Clasping for golden sandgrains on the margin of the deep

Where every wave is saying, sweep, sweep, sweep.

No, no. Not in tragic sadness all alone

Will I face the inevitable lightning:

Your face yellow, or wan, dead and frightening

Down in the dark new box black with lacquering.

Instead, Ill stand happy and mad as the rain,Watching the deep drops, like sucked gumdrops, fall

And on the gathered mourners wetly roll

Prescient and perfect and round as crystal balls.

My time continuing, your time remains,

For I will praise you, darling, till you are come again.


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vvvv 132

117If I were without whoever you are

Would I feel the loss, and miss it?

The spoon licked clean, the talk at the bar,

The bree and crackers, the hand at whist?

If I were without whoever you are

Would your memory enlarge to a shade?

Would you haunt me at midnight with a twanged guitar,

Misplace my keys, ruin parades?

Would I bury my head in your pillow,Sniff the drawer where your sweaters were left?

At movies, would I weep like a willow?

Would I feel like a victim of theft?

Who would it be who was driving my car

If I were without whoever you are?


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vvvv133

118Tell me, does love have sorrow for its marrow?

Is a dandelion lovely only

Because its baldness leaves us lonely?

When the player prates Tomorrow, tomorrow...

Or the expired milk curls its lip,

Their change of state makes us moue and weep.

Is it the same with love and her tears

Wiping our noses or blinking them back

Stops our hearts as if under attack.

O, look in the mirror with that look of fear:

The horseman is coming to trample our dears.

The x-ray, once backlit, the cancer is clear.

The test returned positive from the hospital staff,

Our hearts in our throats, and we cannot gasp.


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vvvv 134

119Death holds lovers who forget each other,

Who pretend the soft pulsings in a wrist

Everlastingly unroll.Deaths cold furs

Wrap up those proud hearts hot velvets

In a chill no quilt can conquer.

It is no idle boast of coffins

To say they box us best that box us last.

In satin trim and eternal dim

We kiss goodbye our past.

No lovers squalls within such walls remain.

So hold me now, and thou to thou,

Well build a house of love and pillows

Plumped with such subtle human powersDeaths retreat will last our lifetimes hours.


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vvvv135

120Sitting there so saucily thoughtful,

Your firm legs a-dangle, uncrossed,

Your eyes milky and mildly unfocused

As your lips taste tart thoughts that are lustful:

What pictures are you painting in your mind?

Do azure sands unfurl below tan skies?

Do proud men crouch between your thighs

Flashing dark looks beneath hair wildly curled?

You sit on your tall fantasists throne

Cruel and adored, the barstool worn flat

From daily use (chopping carrots and all that),

A woman who shy-slyly transforms her home

Into Pans Cavern, where white firelight dances,

Anonymous hands strip us, and we grow frantic.


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vvvv 136

121Im not quite sure I quite know quite how

Or quite why you love me even now.

After so many leerings and pairings,

So many hesitations and darings,

Assignations, arrangements and trysts,

Allurements, procurements and back alley kisses,

Still you return, still make me feel missed.

At each meeting the mystery deepens,

Yet no abyss intervenes with its weeping,

No catastrophe clatters, no shinbone shatters,

In fact, almost nothing at alls the matter!

Only you and I standing in the clear air,

No moon romancing the contented pair

Waiting for nothing else to appear.


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vvvv137

122What can summer add to what our winter

Love has found? The heat and desperate damp of days

Leaning from the sill with a sangria pitcher,

Moonlight looming through a greasy lens,

The stacked smoke of apartment grills

Confusing fuzzy flavors and leaving palettes burnt,

The noise of neighbor kids grinding by on big wheels

Floating through summer screens green with bugs and lint.

Oh summer is one-thousand annoyances

Compressed into ninety sweaty nights

While Bennies scoop up spots on all the beaches....

Love me to the depth, love me to the height

Of all the loving any human heart has vowed.Only, do not wait for summer; love me now.


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vvvv 138

123I like to watch you try the new words on your tongue,

Mouthing missus and the house address

Strange as Demosthenes with his pebble-tongue.

All of this had come of your trying Yes

Once before the parsons congregation:

A new household, and a man, and all this strangeness.

New wife, is all your world a wedding?

Is stepping past a traffic light like passing arches garlanded?

Is love brand new, or just the Sears bedding?

Your married life, you say, began in childhood

Dressing dolls; in middleschool there came petting;

Then all the mercenary ads in Modern Bride....

Knock the domestic idols from the shelf!

Step in, my merry love, and be yourself.


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vvvv 140

125I burn through muses like Estes rockets

Skirts and faces whirl in a grand fandango,

The shipboard romances tucked in a pocket

Real and unreal as a fabulous go-go.

Love crumbles at my lips, a communion wafer

Eaten when blood and wine are not enough,

Nor I transformed by what I have quaffed.

Loves no drug to make us feel safer;

Its a razor on which we willingly tango

To a personal oblivion we have crafted

Cunningly, from basement to rafters.

And in this morose house, my soul

Winds the empty stairs and surveys the windows

Hoping I do not know what I know.


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vvvv141

126Would you buy me a backyard full of dreams?

I see the fence, pale, a little rattled.

I see the tiger-lilies growing boldly along the seam.

I see the moles house, by his round door the dottle.

Theres room enough for vegetables, some bamboo,

A clothesline dancing from the house to the tree,

Maybe a swing below a low branch, too.

I see us there, happy, and the huge moon makes three.

So many dreams vibrate above this square of ground;

So many terrible, lovely things live in our bodies.

When will this dreaming and wanting have an end?

After long enough, even pure dreams seem shoddy.

Would you buy me a backyard full of dreams?

Stand beside me, just here. Do not dream.


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vvvv 142

127You had grown quiet in a snowy field,

Stood a little near the fence, did not move

But led sleeping flakes on your blushing tongue to yield

Their bodies back to water, misting love.

How like those little crystals, though in large,

My solemn wishes harmless fall on your magnificence

To dissolve in the huge waters of your marge

And, losing all themselves, add nothing to your sense.

For you are more, in your silent warmth,Like constant earth that wears seasons for her veils,

Changing summer green for autumns gaiety,

More constant, more true, more everything of worth

Than the fretful melts that touch your least detail

And must, with touching, the seasons of theirbeing interchange,

Losing their winter dignity in your kissing spring.


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vvvv143

128Where do the birds go when it rains?

Their wings like little snippers are still,

Black wings, yellow wings, grey wings, again

And again they flash... and, like knives, are still.

Again and again the pain of tears is falling;

All over the world and my block it is raining,

On the little birds especiallyin their walls

Of bushes, their deep green bushes, theyre wailing.

A bird wails with silence, for a bird

Is born to be always singing; it is not born

To be silent in the rain, in a bush, like a word

Unspoken. So much silence! My heart is torn

With words I have not spoken, cannot speak

When you look at me like rain beginning to break.


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vvvv 144

129I do not love you the way fire loves wood

Although my heats as great, my hunger greater;

I do not love you as saints crave the good

Although my devotions deeper than saints prayer.

Not by any measure of heart, hope, or greed

Does my loving come round to loving you;

Not by comparisons calipers does my love exceed

What others love may be for those they do.

No; it is by excess of gentlenessAnd superlatives of softest care,

By exquisite forethought for your happiness

That my love arrives when you are least aware

And prepares the wide ground with downy flakes

For your descent from clouds into the love I make.


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vvvv145

130At sunset, how it all runs away from one,

Day slips by day slippery till days are done;

Whatever we were is not what we become.

Old age should rage, but we are infant beings

And do not know our ends and meanings

Carved from scrap, and, erected, leaning.

What comes to us and comes of us is scattered;

We moon by mirrors as if mirrors mattered

But the self is fugitive, identity shattered.

We are a rift in the jazzmans riff,

A glass-bottomed boat lazily adrift

Sighing into slender reeds that whistle rough.

And so, our only musics not our own

But times, whose ticking hand leaves none alone.


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vvvv 146

131Love is a corpse, nothing but a corpse

Of joy, of memory, until the next minute

Lips incinerate, fire goes up in the copse,

Fire-fingers through the furze spread enchantment,

And the body, momentarily present,

Manifests for its own self-destruction:

When what is you has escaped its vent

And enters me, hissing whispers of perfection.

So long and lovingly do we circle

In this clasp, scientists at our instruments

Hooked to realitys terrifying lure,

The self at the telescope knows not where it went.

The fishing line cuts until souls bones show

That cadaverous look, that ecstatic glow.


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vvvv147

132That night you sang to me shines in me now,

Long streamers of notes poured from a bucket;

I am wrapped in your song, the long hair shadowy,

Completely contained in your voice as in a locket.

Move your voice over the fluid night,

Lift hosannas from your throat like fireflies,

Sparks flung arrowlike from the flames light

When green wood goes yearning to the campfire.

Now your voice is dark, black pools in a cave,

Liquid with the deep auguries of earth,

Baptismal of beginnings, the underground nave

Where songs spring among the first things of life.

You carry me around your neck, your voice full;

I flow with you into everything beautiful.


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vvvv 148

133Shivery as a delicate dart from a blowgun

You entered my blood, and my blood responded

Shivering until I left my lonely skin

And entered fully where I had only wandered.

Now my heart has been set loose among the stars....

I visit the constellations, my neighbors;

The Plieades are in my arms, not strangers;

Andromedas my roommate, borrowing my car

To drive the dark wildernesses behind your eyes.And there I am, too, licking, flickering.

O, such wilderness! Beyond known skies

I gather fiery flowers continually,

Fattening my basket, fat to overflowing

With just you, all the you I am knowing.


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vvvv149

134Everywhere people are looking at the heavens

For perfection, for completion, for

A patch to cover the holes in themselves.

Even the man, the woman at an auction,

Bidding low and hoping for a bargain,

Are looking for a cheap perfection.

The ears of the fox twitch again and again,

Alertly aware of the winds siftings,

Nose lifted to sniff a vulnerable perfection.

Even the fox, even the sandflea sings

This song of seeking that will not hush.

This song is revolving through everything

Slowly and grandly as gravitys deep crush....

Somewhere, with great perfection, you holsteryour toothbrush.


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136Love comes apart, like shards, in the hand,

Defies the twine in the newspaper bundle;

Decrepit as autumn, love creeps toward the cold

Dissolution entombed in earths snowy mantle.

When the body departs, love departs;

Love does not endure among the bones.

Love is the fleshs unconquerable throne,

An elegance of kisses, a masterpiece of hearts.

Two hands, when they cross, build cathedrals;

Two hearts, when they meet, come to summer

In an instant, like ringing a bell.

Love, in this life, is all lifes shimmer.

So take this hand. Today, take this handAnd kneel with me, and knead our daily bread.


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vvvv 152

137If I am living, I must be loving,

As air enters the lungs, as words exit the mouth,

My diamond toward your diamond is craving

Twin lights entwined as self within self,

Shine within shine, our beauties exchanging.

How lightly we touch the deep-hidden beacon

That flares unwearied, unwary of loss,

A lighthouse that gives all to all who may come:

Illuminations essence, simple, unglossed

A lamp where we read our hearts simple tome:

Loving is living with the extravagance of grass.

Extravagant we shimmer as dew shines in the grass,

As dew lives a moment (and that moment must pass)Our loving is dew, and must vanish at last.


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vvvv153

138Crying out in my wounds, I do not find you.

Crying out in midnight misery, you are gone.

Crying out from inside the mountain, I hear no reply.

Crying out from under seas of tears, I drown.

Is there nothing to find in this thin agony?

Has pain no standing with loves ecstasies?

Sweet, sweet the shame of wanting you only.

Sweeter than honeysuckle is being unworthy,

Being a bark-wasp on the great tree of your beauty,Being the dust blown about by your eagles wings.

I crawl before the thrown light of your glance.

I shrivel like burning tissue to nothing.

Crying out of my emptiness, I empty myself

Breathing in at last the nectar of yourself.


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vvvv 154

139An infinity of needles stick in my thumb

Whenever I try to write this love,

This cargo of roses, this boxcar of honeycombs,

All the things unearthed by your eyes from above.

When you and I talk, it is two rivers meeting,

The white ropes of foam go on riding

Together among many rocks, our silver notes greeting

The silver skyand our laughter keeps striding.

When you and I sleep, our dreams exchange clothes

And we stand up in each others shadow-world

Like puppets unfolded from a magic chest of souls

Our faces gigantic in rouge and wood.

Only in dreams, where our strings tangle,

Can I write like a river alive with sun-spangles.


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vvvv155

140Let loves little sunbeam into your heart;

Do not fear loves indelible dart

Whose impact, whose crater, can blow hearts apart.

Let loves little sunbeam into your heart;

Let blossom loves seed in your most indwelling part

Whose wild vine kudzus the field of the heart.


Dont yelp when loves hammer and tongs make

you smart,

Would you rather remain an ignorant tart?


Through stained-glass parables and great works of art

Love has come crashing, and even smashed Sartre.

Let loves little sunbeam into your heart

And Ill endure every t

Of flares, of flowers (poems, poetry)

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Transcript of Of flares, of flowers (poems, poetry)