Poem of the Day

[Ded Poet]

AN OPINION ON THE QUESTION OF PORNOGRAPHY
Wislaya Szymborska

There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
This sort of wontonness runs wild like a wind-born weed
on a plot laid out for daisies.

Nothing's sacred for those who think.
Calling things brazenly by name,
risque analyses, salacious syntheses,
frenzied, rakish chases after the bare facts,
the filthy fingering of touchy subjects,
discussion in heat--it's music to their ears.

In broad daylight or under cover of night
they form circles, triangles, or pairs.
The partners' age or sex is unimportant.
Their eyes glitter, their cheeks are flushed.
Friend lead friend astray.
Degenerate daughters corrupt their fathers.
A brother pimps for his little sister.

They prefer the fruits
from the forbidden tree of knowledge
to the pink buttocks found in glossy magazines--
all that ultimately simple-hearted smut.
The books they relish have no pictures.
What variety they have lies in certain phrases
marked with a thumbnail or a crayon.

It's shocking, the positions,
the unchecked simplicity with which
one mind contrives to fertilize another!
Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.

During these trysts of theirs, the only thing that's steamy is the tea.
People sit on their chairs and move their lips.
Everyone crosses only his own legs
so that one foot is resting on the floor
while the other dangles freely in midair.
Only now and then does somebody get up,
go to the window,
and through a crack in the curtain
take a peep out at the street.

 

[Ded Poet]

Nicolas Guillen

MADRIGAL

Your womb is smarter than your head,
And as smart as your bottom.
See--
The fierce black grace
Of your naked body.

You are the symbol of the forest,
With your red necklaces,
Your bracelets of gold,
And the dark alligator
Swimming in the Zambezi of your eyes.



-----------

 

[daughter]

Enjoy the reads

DP-

Thanks for adding this thread to selections. I appreciate it.


Peace,

daughter

 

[JUDO]

Title?

DP -

What is the significance of the title "Madrigal?" I only know it for the ancient song form.

Thanks,
- Judo

 

[Ded Poet]

Audre Lorde

ON A NIGHT OF THE FULL MOON

I

Out of my flesh that hungers
and my mouth that knows
comes the shape I am seeking
for reason.
The curve of your waiting body
fits my waiting hand
your breasts warm as sunlight
your lips quick as young birds
between your thighs the sweet
sharp taste of limes.

Thus I hold you
frank in my heart's eye
in my skin's knowing
as my fingers conceive your flesh
I feel your stomach
moving against me.

Before the moon wanes again
we shall come together.

II

And I would be the moon
spoken over your beckoning flesh
breaking against reservations
beaching thought
my hands at your high tide
over and under inside you
and the passing of hungers
attended, forgotten.

Darkly risen
the moon speaks
my eyes
judging your roundness
delightful.




---

 

[Ded Poet]

Richard Brautigan

I'VE NEVER HAD IT DONE SO GENTLY BEFORE

The sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
I've never had it done so gently before.
You have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.













----

 

[Ded Poet]

Adrienne Rich

The following is from 'Twenty-One Love Poems' in The Dream of a Common Language.

(THE FLOATING POEM, UNNUMBERED)

Whatever happens to us, your body
will haunt mine--tender, delicate
your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
of the fiddle-head fern in forests
just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs
between which my whole face has come and come--
the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there--
the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth--
your touch on me, firm, protective, searching
me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers
reaching where I had been waiting years for you
in my rose-wet cave--whatever happens, this is.









----

 

[Ded Poet]

e.e. cummings

SHE BEING BRAND... (XIX)

she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on

the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

 

[Ded Poet]

Nancy Morejon (Cuba)

I LOVE MY MASTER

I love my master.
I gather brushwood to start his daily fire.
I love his blue eyes.
Gentle as a lamb,
I pour drops of honey for his ears.
I love his hands
that threw me down on a bed of grasses.
My master bites and subjugates.
He tells me secret tales while
I fan his body,
running with wounds and bullet-pierced
from long days in the sun and plundering wars,
I love his roving pirate's feet
that have pillaged foreign lands.
I rub them with the softest powders
I could find, one morning,
coming from the tobacco fields.
He strummed his ornate guitar and
melodious couplets soared,
as though from Manrique's throat.
I longed to hear a marimbula sound.
I love his fine red mouth
that speaks words I can't understand
for the language I speak to him
still isn't his own.

And the silk of time is in threads.
Overhearing the old black oversears
I learned how my lover
doled out whip-blows
in the vatroom of the sugar-mill,
as if it were a hell, that of the Lord God
they harped upon so much.

What's he going to say to me?
Why do I live in this hole not fit for a bat?
Why do I wait on him hand and foot?
Where does he go in his lavish coach
drawn by horses that are luckier than me?
My love for him like the creeping weeds
that overrun the private food-plots fo the slaves,
the only thing I can really call my own.

I curse

this muslin robe he has draped over my shoulders;
these vain laces he has pitilessly made me wear;
my household tasks in the afternoon where
no sunflowers grow;
this language so stubbornly hostile I cant' spit it out
these stone breasts that can't give him suck,
this belly slashed by his age-old whip;
this damned heart.

I love my master but every night
when I cross the blossoming path to the canefield,
the secret place of our acts of love,
I see myself knife in hand,
flaying him like an innocent animal.

Bewitching drumbeats
now drown his cries, his sufferings.
The bells of the sugar-mill call...






From Ain't I A Woman! A book of women's poetry from around the world


Please feel to respond or post favorite poems here. I have been trying to keep them in at least a semi-erotic vein...

 

[daughter]

Thanks

DP--

Enjoying the reading. Just bought a collection of Adrienne Rich. I was introduced to her work through "Language of Life". I love Moyers' interviews, a wonder anthology. I read it often.

Peace,

daughter

 

[Fairytat]

A favorite short poem of mine:

Kim Addonizio

First Poem for You

I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can't see them. I'm sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lighning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we're spent
and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in your skin. They'll last until
you're seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.

 

[Fairytat]

Another poem:

Full Moon and You're Not Here

Useless moon,
too beautiful to waste.
But you, my Cinderella,
have the midnight curfew,
a son waiting to be picked up from his den meeting,
and the fractured marrage weighing on your head
like a crown of thorns.

Oh my beauty,
it's not polite
to keep me waiting.
To send me reeling into a spiral
and then say good night.

I smoke a cigar,
play a tango,
gulp my gin and tonic.

Goddamn you.

Full moon and you're not here.
I take off the silk slip,
the silver bangles.

You're in love with my mind.

But sometimes, sweetheart,
a woman needs a man
who loves her ass.

--Sandra Cisneros from Loose Woman