Urine and Lilies
for Pablo Neruda
I had an early love for Walt Whitman.
I did.
He was not by any means a concrete idol,
jutting out over the deserted lines.
he seemed, to me, to simply be
a Man of Truth.
And I've wanted to tell the truth,
since the age of seven.
Flipping through a tattered copy
of Ecran at the age of sixteen
I found my namesake.
I wanted to fall into the creases,
and disappear into the little folded pages,
smelling of urine and lilies.
Whitman sang of America
and I sang of Despair,
which is everywhere else.
Once I learned the supernatural
impressions of word pairings,
I wrote a love poem for every
year I was alive.
I don't think anyone appreciated that.
The love I felt was too naively erotic.
And though I am no, Walt Whitman,
I am the voice of the exotic,
of the psychotic, neurotic.
The Quixotic.
See, I can make rhymes too.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Reach for the clouds. . .
Tickle your toes. . .
-
driving home from the farmer's market- I can't see anything- through this storm- I come home to sleep- with you-rest in your arms fu...
-
like me- it serves as a question as well as an appropriately foolish letter in bad company it only teams up with words like yodel, ...
-
motionless sap. ogling your shadow, you have much thinking to do. has the potassium kicked you in the arse yet-and got you going? you a...
-
Under a blanket it was at high altitudes in love or nauseous? I once held his hand his touch was so soothing-but with a lion's face. and...
-
nipped at the ankles which is how I wander through life sometimes I must be pushed through a door finally opened after years of knock...
-
Tickling toes- there was something about that barefooted madness something about that wistful waist-high wishing and wooshing in the woods, ...
-
and now that the anger is gone there may be a few more glimpses like looking out of the window through a thin veil of silk. a look in...
-
confession is all: it is what my poetry is, and that is my life.
-
sex object. not afraid of the words. I've used many objects for the sake of sex. in fact my body has been pretty disposable- I don't...
-
Reminder "You do not seem to understand," they'd say "That rivers are wide, and are not so easily crossed, we fear, they ...
A poem of Pablo Neruda and mentioning Walt Whitman; WOW! I enjoy the line, "once I learned the supernatural impressions of word pairings, I wrote a love poem for every year I was alive," how in the world do you do it? You write definitively from the heart and soul, no question about that, but to write with your soul about people you admire, love, or care for is so magnanimous,I have to say you are becoming a favorite of mine as a poet....I see you up there with Neruda and Whitman...Excellent work here, why have you not been published??
ReplyDeleteI'll continue to read and continue to be fixated on your words. Thanks for the privilege a.m.
why haven't I been published? the easy answer might be that I have gone to the wrong places. most of the rejections I get tell me they love my work but it doesn't fit their criteria, even though I tend to be very selective with the places I send my work too. lol...anyway...
ReplyDeletegot any advice?