I Needed You

This kind of desperate inspiration
is like fingernails scraping
the walls of my empty room.
The last time I left
you were right there, right
where you're supposed to be
& then you were walking away,
you didn't see me put my hand
against the window to wave goodbye.

I figure this much:
Tonight I owe you something
I can't put down on a page
For kissing the tears right out of my eyes.
You'd be amazed at
how easy it is for me
to get over the things that hurt
when you put your arms around me.

Baby, your name lives on my lips
You're the kind of think I thought
I could only dream about.
But imagination got the best of me.

I always thought I wanted something real
When in fact I wanted something true.

I needed you.

Sharon Olds, "Greed and Aggression"

Someone in Quaker meeting talks about greed and aggression
and I think of the way I lay the massive
weight of my body down on you
like a tiger lying down in gluttony and pleasure on the
elegant heavy body of the eland it eats,
the spiral horn pointing to the sky like heaven.
Ecstasy has been given to the tiger,
forced into its nature the way the
forcemeat is cranked down the throat of the held goose,
it cannot help it, hunger and the glory of
eating packed at the center of each
tiger cell, for the life of the tiger and the
making of new tigers, so there will
always be tigers on the earth, their stripes like
stripes of night and stripes of fire-light––
so if they had a God it would be striped,
burnt-gold and black, the way if
I had a God it would renew itself the
way you live and live while I take you as if
consuming you while you take me as if
consuming me, it would be a God of
love as complete satiety,
greed and fullness, aggression and fullness, the
way we once drank at the body of an animal
until we were so happy we could only
faint, our mouths running, into sleep.

This is not the first time I've posted a poem by Sharon Olds, and probably it won't be the last. There is just no other poet out there who seems to get sex in quite the same way I get sex but can't put into words. Can't put into words? I wonder if it is just my general laziness that is keeping me from those things I want, spilling from my fingers. 

Mark Strand, "Lines For Winter"

Tell yourself

as it gets cold and gray falls from the air

that you will go on

walking, hearing

the same tune no matter where

you find yourself—

inside the dome of dark

or under the cracking white

of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself

what you know which is nothing

but the tune your bones play

as you keep going. And you will be able

for once to lie down under the small fire

of winter stars.

And if it happens that you cannot

go on or turn back

and you find yourself

where you will be at the end,

tell yourself

in that final flowing of cold through your limbs

that you love what you are.

Believe, by Maya Stein

Maybe the camera crew is at someone else’s house,
a spotlight haloing over another’s fleshy story.
Maybe the mailman is delivering the good news
to your neighbor, or a different city entirely,
and you come home to a rash of catalogues,
the second notice for a doctor’s bill, a plea
from the do-gooders for whatever you can spare.

Maybe you haven’t cleaned your kitchen floor in weeks,
forgotten to nourish the front garden, spilled too much
coffee in your car, weaving through traffic.

Maybe you are 10 pounds heavier than last year.
Maybe your skin is betraying your age.
Maybe winter is ravaging your heart.
Maybe you are afraid, or lonely, or furious, or wanting out
of every commitment you entered with such vigor and trust.

Maybe you’ve bitten your nails down to the quick,
chosen your meals badly, ignored the advice of those
who know you best. Maybe you are stubborn as a toddler.

Maybe you are clumsy or foolish or hasty or reckless.
Maybe you haven’t read all the books you’re supposed to.
Maybe your handwriting is still illegible after all these years.
Maybe you spent too much on a pair of shoes you didn’t need.
Maybe you left the window open and the rain ruined the cake.
Maybe you’ve destroyed everything you’ve ever wanted to save.

Still.

If anything, believe in your own strange loveliness.
How your body, even as it stumbles, angles for light.

The way you hold a dandelion with such yearning and tenderness,
the whole world stops spinning.

~ Maya Stein

"A Ghost Abandons the Haunted"

by Katie Cappello

You ignore the way light filters through my cells,

the way I have of fading out—still

there is a constant tug, a stretching,

what is left of me is coming loose. Soon,

I will be only crumbs of popcorn,

a blue ring in the tub, an empty

toilet paper roll, black mold

misted on old sponges,

strands of hair woven into

carpet, a warped door

that won’t open, the soft spot

in an avocado, celery, a pear,

a metallic taste in the beer, a cold sore

on your lip—and when I finally lose my hold

you will hear a rustle and watch me spill

grains of rice across the cracked tile.

Anyone Who Touches Me Breaks My Heart

Maybe it's because I can't handle being alone
And the men that I find just don't give enough
Or they are not there enough
It's either me or them who's never enough
But I know there's a word for me
And it is: Hopeless

Maybe it's because I've faked so many orgasms
I might have forgotten what a real one feels like
But I still leave them breathless,
And so tired they can barely move afterwards
But they still have enough energy
To get up and drive home, or just
Make me take them there
Or they sleep on the couch or the floor
Just never next to me.

Maybe it's because they all know
I'm an easy one to use
Every man knows that
The women who can't even
Look at themselves in the mirror
Must be good in bed
Because they only care about pleasing others
Not themselves.

Maybe it's because I've always hoped too much
To hear someone calling my name
Though none of them ever do.
Some can't even get their tongues around it,
I try to explain it but no one listens
So when I'm screaming and crying:
"I don't know what I'm doing
I don't know who I am"
They just say 'Baby, come here'
And before I know it
Their tongue is in my mouth
Shutting me up
As if that's what it will take
To make me whole.

Maybe it's because I know
I'll be used until I die
Used for my money or my car
Or my bed or my poems
Or for my tongue or for
What's between my legs.
They will take and take and keep taking
And when I try to say
"I deserve better than this"
They won't even know
What I'm talking about.

I guess I wrote this back in 2003 or 2004. Now that I am putting poems online, I am really wishing I had dated these, but maybe I thought they would be timeless, or I thought they would be kept secret in my notebook forever.

When I decided to post a poem tonight, I was thinking of this one, and I swear when I opened my notebook the pages fell open on that particular page.

When I read these words, I can remember the time I wrote this, I remember why and for who. I remember the exact way it felt to be used and taken for granted, and I wonder, deep inside, do I still feel this way about myself? Do I still think that I am hopeless, and not worth real love?

I guess it's just one of those things I have to figure out about myself, and I'm glad to have a creative outlet in which to do that, still.

Sex Without Love

Today, because I am a glutton for punishment in the form of nostalgia, I went digging through my old Livejournal entries again. I thought I would be able to find something good to repost here as a cheat because today and tomorrow are going to be busybusy with campaign things, and yet all of the things I wrote, which are some of (in my opinion) the most beautiful words that ever fell from my hands, it was someone else's poem that I wanted to post today. Steph sent it to me years ago, and here it is again:

Sharon Olds, Sex Without Love:

How do they do it, the ones who make love

without love? Beautiful as dancers,

gliding over each other like ice-skaters

over the ice, fingers hooked

inside each other's bodies, faces

red as steak, wine, wet as the

children at birth whose mothers are going to

give them away. How do they come to the

come to the come to the God come to the

still waters, and not love

the one who came there with them, light

rising slowly as steam off their joined

skin? These are the true religious,

the purists, the pros, the ones who will not

accept a false Messiah, love the

preist instead of the God. They do not

mistake the lover for their own pleasure,

they are like great runners: they know they are alone

with the road surface, the cold, the wind,

the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-

vascular health- just factors, like the partner

in the bed, and not the truth, which is the 

single body alone in the universe

against its own best time.

It's been a long time, and sex without love is something I've known pretty intimately in my life. TMI? But this really is what it feels like, even when someone is on you and in you - a single body alone in the universe... I'm just way too nostalgic today for some reason.

As for NaNoWriMo, my progress has been great. As of last night I got to 11,449 words and I'm 1,453 words "ahead" of where I should be today. Unfortunately, I definitely will get NO writing done tomorrow, and probably none today either, but that's okay! I will be so pooped from tomorrow's campaign activities, I probably won't leave the house again for a week, so there will be plenty of laying in bed catch up time ahead of me.