In your eyes,
the pottery of ancient cultures.
From your smile,
sunspots
that leave vervet monkeys sitting, perplexed
At the breath-thinness of a peasant blouse
reclining between August stars
and the skin of your shoulder.
They find, in every stitch and design,
a catalog of figs, and vertigo.
They are drunk
on the ferment of your lazy accent.
At the Museum of Utilitarian Wonders,
I find
the pottery of ancient cultures.
A brochure contains the beginnings of nests
for birds who do not exist--
vervets who do not exist--
drunk under a sun hidden by clouds.
I clasp ancient ornaments onto your wrists,
your throat,
your ankle,
but your body is clouds.
You cannot accept these gifts, or anything else--
Just rain,
love,
colors,
reversed images,
reversed images,
that do not exist except in the singular attentions
of these useless lines.
_____
This brilliance made me dizzy. Very sexy.
ReplyDelete"At the breath-thinness of a peasant blouse
reclining between August stars
and the skin of your shoulder.
They find, in every stitch and design,
a catalog of figs, and vertigo."
"I clasp ancient ornaments onto your wrists,
your throat,
your ankle,
but your body is clouds."
"Just rain,
love
colors (illusions upside down and interpreted
by the funhouse mind)"
This is the kind of poetry I like to sink into and let it carry me away in its own peculiar current. Timeless and beautiful.
ReplyDeleteRead this twice now and it's hard to say what stands out more for me--the scientifically exact way your images mesh from fact to surreal swash of sensory impression, the human pain if you read between the lines, or just the emotional music it plays in my heart. You are developing in every poem, growing, and your voice only becomes more distinct in the new keys you are learning to sing. Beautiful, feeling write, Shay.
ReplyDeleteOne could live with such a poem as one does a painting on the wall; ever deriving small pleasures from the sweep and swoof of it, tippling the brain and inner eye. . .
ReplyDeleteSo gorgeous. It does carry one away, on all the dreamy imagery. Loved it.
ReplyDeleteWhat Hedge said....and wow.
ReplyDeleteThis is both whole and broken - it speaks of ancient dreams and warnings, and yet offers the beautiful kiss of Beauty, for love - enduring? hard to say, perhaps just the knowing ... of a soft touch, like light falling on a shoulder, sheathed in a thin peasant's blouse. Yearning, vision, a gentle push-pull with the words, playing for the craft well considered, with startling vision - yes, this is evocative and exceedingly rich - and as already noted, it just begs time, to sit and read and savour. It's wonderful, truly - an unexpected pleasure (for the images) but not of your skills and wordsmithing.
ReplyDeleteThis is beautiful... I see crazed glass written among brand new. All the things that speak poetry, draw ink to pen it. Another I wish I'd written this.
ReplyDelete