Theater, theater everywhere and not a jot to spare.
I awake to coffee spill and news-ful cancer’d glare.
And fire drill call to hurry up let’s go I’m gonna be late.
Flinging my body to stand from sleep, I jerk my gait.
O where is my morning muse with her golden hair?
She is cleaning the sick of crusted plates from night.
She is driving the pouting glum of stare to school late.
She is plumbing pieces of despair picked from market.
Theater, theater in the air and none too soon to bear.
I lunch on steering wheel carousel toast with shmear.
From work to work I go changing shoes at red lights.
And home again to gaze into supper’s dull delights.
O where is my afternoon muse with her flesh of dun?
She is quilting the patches of place to place and back.
She is feeding the abysmal depths of teenage hunger.
She is bickering the truth of decaying parental mind.
Theater, theater nowhere near the pleasure palace be.
I sleep in hollow cavern deep with laundered sheets.
And trace the catatonic trail of deeds that light leads.
To bed alone with fantasy flee’d I sweep seams free.
O where is my night late muse with her sleeping brow?
She is unloosing strands tied tight in day’s do and do.
She is fallowed dark in forms of wisp and trollop sims.
She is aloft in costumed stages of trim repair of dreams.
When the thought I seek doesn’t come
I sit poised, fingers frozen in mid-type,
waiting for the words to percolate down
from my brain to my digits in wait, ready
But when sentences flow without stop
when they pour onto pad seamlessly
is when there is no thought, only flow
flying letters flipping up the paged screen
The stretch of linguistic limbs of mind
and the barren desert of heart desire
produces no cave gem of the delightful
just a wrenched out, eked out word squirt
Drenched in the sweat of sexless desire
it hurts to turn the cogs and wheels on
to keep the grooves oiled and tea hot
I am no longer the poet I was ever before.
Come to me mine, my mistress,
in the early hours’ pre-day pleasure;
the Indian motel clerk with tossled hair
and somnambulant grin, smell of curry
and the rice crispy bars he displays
with the thinly brewed coffee in plastic,
dark and medium roast depicted
by milk chocolate or unsweetened cocoa
colored beans on the mini cups’ sealed
aluminum foil covering, slowly and
sullenly swaps a key for my hundred.
In the lunch time hour, I come to you
in your bed, while others no wiser for
not knowing as they wend through the
river of their days at school, in traffic,
at work, to whisper in your ear what a
great fuck my mistress is and ever she
is thus, in her leather stripes and boots
lace tongue and slippery warm fingers
that rifle my hair, trace the topography,
thick, hard rubber muscles of my back
labored strong on clay courts in my day.
On late Friday afternoon, I call you to me;
come lie with me and hold my slumber
in yours, in your touch as we bask
in the one-ply sheets of sweat and soap
inhaling cleaner fluid scented polish
and the wafting heat of our skin and breath,
a still life of absolution and post passion
slightly swaying bed of our beating chests
as I sink into pillows and you eye ceilings
waiting for the pulsing to subside so that
we can fall into spooned rhythm of sleep.
Nights I send you one word, a number,
a question mark or a letter you know,
my hot queen at the flash of a moment,
the ready response to my steady call
peppered in night and day fantasies of
owning you, possessing every morsel
of your mind for my own amusement,
making you my doll and my caged cunt
waiting, wanting, wishing for my return
and no one can see you, enjoy your
beauty, sex, or mind–for you are mine.
Sex as mystifying exploration, conquest, delight and wonderment in the body, and women (mistresses, Mayer’s room-getting lover, presumably female?) as the object of desire, objectified, as displayed in these two writings, one from the 16th Century and one from the 21st, displays the fascination and abnegation of the object of the gaze, at once giving the object presence (Donne’s specific articles of clothing that immortalize his mistress in the words of his poem) and absence, woman/desire as concept, the object of desire without face, language or representation, just catalyst for desire, erection and egocentric absorption (Mayer’s “one thing left to do, discover me discovering you.”
To His Mistress Going to Bed
BY JOHN DONNE
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry Coronet and shew
The hairy Diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven’s Angels used to be
Received by men; Thou Angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,
My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man.
Your Body is a Wonderland by John Mayer
We got the afternoon
You got this room for two
One thing I’ve left to do
Discover me
Discovering you
One mile to every inch of
Your skin like porcelain
One pair of candy lips and
Your bubblegum tongue
And if you want love
We’ll make it
Swim in a deep sea
Of blankets
Take all your big plans
And break ’em
This is bound to be a while
Your body is a wonderland
Your body is a wonder (I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland
Something ’bout the way the hair falls in your face
I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillowcase
You tell me where to go and though I might leave to find it
I’ll never let your head hit the bed without my hand behind it
you want love?
We’ll make it
Swim in a deep sea
Of blankets
Take all your big plans
And break ’em
This is bound to be a while
Your body is a wonderland
Your body is a wonder (I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland
(I’ll never speak again… I’ll use my hands)
Damn baby
You frustrate me
I know you’re mine, all mine, all mine
But you look so good it hurts sometimes
Your body is a wonderland
(I’ll never speak again… I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonder (I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland
(I’ll never speak again… I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland
Where is my kelly green, my fern? You have moved back to the pines, and I cannot feel your colors visibly, not distinctly, only slippery shades melding one into the other, making my mind yearn for the malachite forest scene of your coming.
Lately, I hunger green, artichoke, asparagus and avocado, even the one that makes you shudder, olive. I walk hunter, drip sap, and smooth moss, the living greens. I ooze.
Last time, when I stuffed you in a box, you danced me among the seething slits and asses, the indecipherable bodies of flickering light, smoke and sweat, and yours in my mouth, on my tongue, salty and sweet scent of yellow-green sea, the hungering hiss of breath on my lips. We shone, our sheen emerald and gyrated hips of jade.
Those were extraordinary days, that caged time down south, when I watched you walk down the city street beside me, clasping the crook of my arm, or scraping your toes against the heat of the ocean smooth sand and then coming to me in your easeful stride and thin-lipped tolerance. The glint in your eye, teasing out desire, was utterly teal and mint tea.
We have traveled deep in the green of your grass, your trees, you in mine.
In moments like today, when either of us lulls and listens, when your mind is dark smoked with bedeviling thoughts of the other who sometimes sits in that bar stool beside me, the burning that bricks up your walls, dug in deep, show me Harlequin, rifle and army green. I hear silent Screamin’ green. Gut green.
There are places that curve around our minds and make your palms moisten in remembrance of lines drawn with your fingers pressed deep past muscle to bone, firing synapses of wince and grin. Back then, in a commercial cocoon waiting, you cradled the pulsing organ that once belonged to me but now rests full, bleeding warm vital viscous tears of soothing dreams and sighs, painfully powerful pounding love in your hands, your hands that I watched unfold my flesh, uncover the beating mass before my eyes. I crushed down in you, myrtle mine, ensavored, enslaved and succumbed, pinched green.
Mantis, Castleton, India, Persia, Russia and Pakistan, paint the air green, tinting the lens in my favorite hue, you. Courage me green to laurel the winter time til spring, the color of you.
Be mindful of wishing, careful with wanting.
The love you seek for warmth might overheat,
asp you in snuggle, strangling your sleep.
Be careful of what you wish for.
The vision of ever after with one love
may poison your spirit, hamper your peace
to think your own, think your thoughts
about everything from jihad to football to
brushing your teeth while watching t.v.
When wishing for one who windows your heart,
un lassos your long labial lust and
dances your daylight, flexible and loose,
don’t jail up in jealousy, secrete in sulking sorrow
or lay yourself down with loneliness
when she is loving you and the world,
living her life in joy without need, you or
an other, only enwrapping you in wide arms,
mind and heart. She is open.
Like her wandering will, she is free like words
she water colors and the sighs she speaks.
She is. Beware the love you dream in her.
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
You are wronged.
You ache so hard your tissue, your blood and beat,
folds in on itself and webs sound,
is the harrowing howl of hammered heart,
the sonorous bass that crashes rhythmic pump,
disrupting the steady, even equanimity,
even dull ticking of your world–
your imagined world–yours and his. Momentarily.
But the rest is long drift, the ebb and flow of hurt and healing.
Some wounds stay raw and open: the scars of lacerated trust,
open and gushing the glutinous lava,
melted rock of your mountain marriage,
the very fount of your avowed–out loud–couplehood.
And the plane of aftermath is sterile, once again stable.
You limp long on broken legged love, on parenthood and promise,
collapsing back into the other when gravity and hormone shifts
make peace appear right in resignation and ennervation.
For you fear no one will hear your last breath.
The hum of the daily feels like presence,
but the cataracts of dream, of your curt kindness,
are but steadying, the leveling of love,
after the fall and the gratitude for life
unending of upheaving insecurity unlived.
The artist and I live in a box of pain,
he in his blue house and me in mine.
Sometimes we share the same frame.
Crippled by pennies and oily spills,
we stream our strife in pen and paint.
Reflections of the tethering tightrope walk,
we sweat and steam in the cloth of life.
We press our ears to the rhythm of talk.
Chewing our nails in the toil of change,
we pay our prison down in collectors’ coin.
Hovering about the dollar bills on display,
we are scission of fancy and fistful plight.
A pression of paper, the sack holds sway.
See us shored in the glean of the glass
in art and always out of grasp the prize.
There is one I call love. He hurts as he pleases me. She bites me in pieces. A love he breathes, a love she makes and yields herself up to me in dreams and waves, sound in my ear, words aglow in squares and rectangles. She is grounding. He is flight. The lover makes love look like me, a mottled mirror of sighs and sinews, curves and cleavage, spectral in flesh, shadows on the buckled sidewalk. My belly lies. She sighs my hair long and he paints my back sticky with tremor and strife. Love is the space between all lovers before me and all after, fractured air of glances at tight hip fallen jeans, fleshy bottom pouted lips, flaxen tress pressed between thumb and forefinger slowly, tenderly slide caressing down its unfurling curl, and the fisted palm wedged in the small of her back. Love is a show, lighting and lines, the scenes sketched out in canned laughs, calculated smiles and familiar illusion. He is burning; she is cool. Love is awakening to the twitch in his sleep and her loud snoring, and falling, falling back, eons wide into the night.
In the gaze of the other 