you will miss me when I burn


Duet, 1962, Adolph Gottlieb

Tombstone as a Lonely Charm, Part 2
--by d.a. levy

you had the deepest eyes
as a child
when you cautiously looked
up at the sun
and restlessly wrote
the world's greatest poem
and your brothers
drinking in the clear water
of the universe
wrote their words with
gold on sacred blue
later they sat back
in the soft fat of their
glutted egos
& talked into eternity
about the mysteries

after the poetic-orgasm
you were still haunted
by some young girl's face

To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage
-- by Robert Lowell

"It is the future generation that presses into being by means of these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours." - Schopenhauer

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .
It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust--
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick? Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

Tear It Down
-- by Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

The Pope's Penis
-- by Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver sweaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat -- and at night
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.