Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Friday, April 23, 2010

Matins by Louise Glück

The sun shines; by the mailbox, leaves of the divided birch tree folded, pleated like fins.
Underneath, hollow stems of the white daffodils,
       Ice Wings, Cantatrice; dark
leaves of the wild violet. Noah says
depressives hate the spring, imbalance
between the inner and the outer world. I make
another case­­­—being depressed, yes, but in a sense passionately
attached to the living tree, my body
actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace,
        in the evening rain
almost able to feel
sap frothing and rising: Noah says this is
an error of depressives, identifying
with a tree, whereas the happy heart
wanders the garden like a falling leaf, a figure for
the part, not the whole.

Friday, September 03, 2004

Teenage Mythology: Daphne and Apollo Revisited

This boy came quietly out of the wood work, and I was caught off guard. No one before him ever really saw me, with my unruly hair, rumpled skirt, and no trace of self-confidence. That was the life I had learned.

He stole what he could –– the minutes off my cell phone, all my days of summer, midnight in my grandma's kitchen, one desperate hug. Of course I ran. The only thing I knew to do was run. No one taught me how to be pretty, how to be loved. I became afraid to learn. Just told myself to keep my muscles pumping to keep me out of reach.

Well. I may have overdone it. I pulled back 400 miles, building the best defense: a separation of two entire states (measured by 7,877,696 people), the length of a muddy river (equaling eternity). A girl needs her space.

But he couldn't drop it. I couldn't understand why he kept pushing against my limitations, what drove him to stand as watchman of my night and day. Turns out, it was only that he knew me. He knew my legs were not long or strong enough to keep me running forever. How could I have known that he would whittle my wooden heart, gently carve away the rough places in me?

By November he was biting at my heels like an obsessive French dog, hanging on the curtain of my voice, and imagining the curl of my hip. Without my permission. I never wanted to be marked, claimed, owned. But now I look at myself, firmly planted in my sneakers and undeniably connected to some puppy of a boy. He lead me out of my darkness and pulled me into his wood. Some very needy roots sprouted out of me and met up with his –– connecting and intertwining finally at the halfway point on the brown bank of the Mississippi. My limbs fork out like awkward branches, pocked and uneven bark covering completely my milk pale skin. He places his hand on my chest to admire his craftsmanship: heart beating full and sticky with some sound resembling love.

Monday, February 16, 2004

puppy, put the skirt on. make me forget who i thought you were (the hip cat of my nightmares) until you devotedly scratched at my door, and every day for two months, howled to the shell of me. trickster, love bites dissolved my chains between your teeth, you melted ice with sugar.

puppy, take the skirt off in my dreams: become my faithful lump. you're a regular visitor in my head these days-- again you stalk in, look around, find a nice clean spot and settle down, shed all over the fucking carpet. how am i supposed to keep this place up, since now you wanna be my dog?

come home, puppy

i feed you under the table straight from my hand, your tongue greasing my palm in its search for the difference between me and the salt. after dinner, you present me with collar and leash, begging night's adventures. when we crawl back in through the broken window, we

come home puppies wet with rain and reeking of grass. so what if we spent all night chasing after cars, sniffing lamp posts, waiting for a bus that never came? we curl up at the foot of the matress and gently whimper into sleep as the moon turns into sugar.

Thursday, October 18, 2001

Love Song For the Drummer by Dot Antoniades


He was chocolatemahoganybrownbrickred
several shades of Indian earth blended
no lines
creaseless
Symmetry danced in his veins
my inner sonata silenced
I became 1 movement
fluid
blushing beige at the thought of him in his boyhood
palms down
panting the vulnerability out of me
vulgar ability I have
to fantasize myself into his country
without knowing anything except
percussion turns me on
But it wasn’t about him
it was the song
La musica beating me ceaseless
senseless

I am young
so young
yet
have old eyes
a stolen soul
I steal souls
but viscerally speaking
my tummy doesn’t tumblesaul when I see him
But when I hear him
my spirit sambas uncontrollably
as if La Mariachi
were plucking steel
string
sinews inside me
Barely breathing
percussion rushing thru me
I could see nothing
I was surrounded by sound
panties stained a deeper shade of clay
as the rhythm made its home between my legs
hatching sunsets
a warmth only I was aware of

His spirit:  soft blunted blade
entering through my exit
I thought I had been spade
reinvented manmade
Music
I want you to lay
in the soft shell cave of my thighs
fill the echoes
make me come legato
because my poems have been plosive
too macho
Raise me 12 notes higher
sweaty palms ride me bareback
give phoenix her flames back
fan the silent valley under her wings
let her sing
until they cut out her tongue
or
the nightingale gets jealous
Wake Calliope
There’s salsa on the glossy cedar dance floor
now that I’ve drank the last drop I want more

I want to know
how bodies moved
in the first shadow of night
before the lights came on
and we saw
and were shamed
cos we felt so good
for our own sake
I want musica keeping my shoulders strong
womb thumping birth of bass
immaculate
no blueprint
to the submission into mass movement
I do not want to merely reflect
He was musician
I was nothing but me listening
trying to tear the atmosphere desperately
because gravity distracts me
keeps me from myself
I swore his eyes were not jewels.
They were dark
rich like chocolate
bigger than Guatemala
They knew things I wanted to know

That night I believed
I believed
Religion escaped me
faith became me
Alone
I dropped to my knees
humbled
and samba’d myself to sleep


© 1999 Dot Antoniades.