As we looked each other over,
Looking for poems in the eyes,
Poems moving in the eyes,
Intellectuality the worst disguise,
Or, what is hidden, what all seek—
The feeling we get when the answer is near—
I cannot tell you why I love you, never could—
A pictured memory with several voices,
Described as if science and beauty were one,
But that’s not it, either—
Demonstrative love, something out of the movies,
Or, in this case, at the movies—do you remember?
You getting up suddenly to leave?
Life is a falling? There’s nothing in it we can stop?
And what am I doing but pondering the plural movies in that idiomatic phrase,
“Something out of the movies,”
Instead of leaving to find you,
Getting you, telling you about what I was trying to say
In the whole poem.
N.L.D. support said,
October 3, 2012 at 8:34 pm
Done Too Soon
Jesus Christ, Fanny Brice
Wolfie Mozart and Humphrey Bogart
And Genghis Khan
And on to H. G. Wells
Ho Chi Minh, Gunga Din
Henry Luce and John Wilkes Booth
And Alexanders King and Graham Bell
Ramar Krishna, Mama Whistler
Patrice Lumumba and Russ Colombo
Karl and Chico Marx
Albert Camus,
E. A. Poe, Henri Rousseau
Sholom Aleichem and Caryl Chessman
Alan Freed and Buster Keaton too
And each one there
Has one thing shared
They have sweated beneath the same sun
Looked up in wonder at the same moon
And wept when it was all done
For bein’ done too soon
For bein’ done too soon
For bein’ done
— Neil Leslie Diamond
Fred support said,
October 7, 2012 at 3:24 pm
Fred gets it wrong
by Robert Conquest
Oh no, we never mention her.
—Because her name might make
Such hellish images recur
As even Fred can’t take?
For once your guess would turn out wrong:
This time the problem is
Not letting Fred go on too long
With happy memories.
She was his secretary, and more;
And so they went away
To take off March and April for
A working holiday.
A peasant hut, fixed by a friend:
From nine Fred would dictate
While she took shorthand and got tanned.
(As Fred’s now keen to state,
Such work together may enrich
Vacant vacation days
To a good intimacy which
You miss if you just laze.)
Then, sour wine and canned corned beef
And next, an icy swim
From the sea-urchin-studded reef:
It all seemed fine to him.
A stroll down to the little port,
A trudge the two miles back
Heavy with provender they’d bought
Between them in a sack.
At dusk she’d do the typing up
While Fred set to and strove
To stew the stuff on which they’d sup
Upon the butane stove.
And so to bed. It seemed to him
The soft play of desire
Sank through a salt-aired sleep to brim
Contentment each day higher.
Then home. The recent victim of
A marital affray,
So still too numb to mention love,
Fred let her get away.
Was she a rose without a thorn?
Fred asks as one of those
Who’s more than once been scratched and torn
By thorns without a rose.
And if they’d wed? Though Fred will say
Well, thorns are bound to sprout,
And petals fade and fall away,
One sees he’s still in doubt.
marcusbales said,
October 8, 2012 at 3:45 am
Lunch
He fingered through his sunlit mane;
His flickering sunspot guile
Blistered with betraying pain
And burned her simple smile.
He seemed, to her, to make her soul
As sunlight makes the day;
She had no chance to see him whole,
And couldn’t look away.
But what was there at which she caught
In his hard, hazel stare –
Love? Or something else she thought
She saw that wasn’t there?
With brightened eyes she watched him eat,
Endured his lunge and pause
In screaming hush while something beat
And bled between his claws.
After lunch she tried to believe
She’d come to love again;
The truth oozed from the hole in her sleeve
Where what she’d worn had been.
thomasbrady said,
October 8, 2012 at 10:29 pm
You had trouble in the dark,
You heard your beating heart
Booming in your ears;
You lived secretly for twelve years;
You lived with love underground
As right above, people milled around.
Is it possible, in love, to be sated?
She was in love with me, of course she waited,
We fell in love, yes of course we dated
Even though we were married to others.
Of course it makes sense, like having sisters and brothers.
You are lonely even with everybody here.
We make a last stop in the vast atmosphere.
You contemplated death with her, death, profound.
Every time she called you, or came around
Life offered you a look, or a far away sound.
My arm around her in bed, my hand went numb
As I thought wistfully of Elysium.