Journal, Day Five

he day everybody (everybody? anybody?) ‘s been waiting for: and on the fifth day they had
SEX!

you wanna know what i’m wearing?

well, first there was the inky cloak,
then i changed into my antic disposition: my doublet all unbraced, my stockings fouled, ungart’red and down-gyved to my ankles,
and then, of course, my traveler’s sea gown, scarfed about me.
and now...

now i’m wearing nothing

but the art between us

and long underwear and jeans and wilco t-shirt and hoodie and puffy parka and pink-yellow-blue woolen cap and handmade muffler and mittens and big boots. (and dark circles under my eyes) (this blog and the eye cream are not doing dick!)
hey, it’s alaska!
and you try paying for the heat on a blogger’s salary. (this ain’t no poetry magazine!)

so, yes, you gotta create your own.

so, did you see my poems in tin house?

if not, here you go, and i don’t know if this violates any copyright shit so go buy the magazine for winnie the pooh’s and poetry’s (and fiction’s and essay’s) sake! (but this time in their proper order, with the revision that they asked me to make, but forgot to include, and without the typo.) (nothing against tin house!!!!!!!!!!)( i love tin house and it’s inhabitants!) (and hey, what’s a little misreading?????) (and what’s a little allusion?) (a lot!):

FRANCESCA SAYS MORE

that maiden thump was book on floor, but
does it really matter who kissed who
first or then who decided to go further?
lower? faster? naturally, we took
turns on top. now here, now there, and up
and down...once it started no one even thought to think to stop.
so, we have holes inside our souls,
but mustn’t we begin by filling others’?
god gave us lips and hands and parts
that cannot possibly be saved for prayer. nor by.
i will not name name, claim fame by how well
or who i fucked or why, it happens all the time.
and it’s you, white pilgrim, whom next galehot seeks.

fuck. we didn’t read again for weeks.

(AND MORE)

(o (l)uxu/orious (p)/(l)ussuria) one can rule
rimini and still not rule (or rim) me. doric, ionic,
phallic: i liked it all. i moaned and wept as i do now,
but it was a joy and a different kind of sorrow:
to see your lover’s eyes when he’s down there. down there
the very root was the very root, and fig was fruit and nut
gelato. down here how it happened can still make me shudder.
sigh.
just how far down, sinner, must you go? whatever pleases you:
follow my tail, my thigh. and: VIDE FICA MIA. eat my furbellowed
heart, tremble at my furbo and my body gone but still beautiful
heart, this life that’s for the birds is saved by rhyming such as our
heart, if you twist my arm just right i’ll loose my mind.

the new style is the old style: from behind.

FRANCESCA SAYS TOO MUCH

each day i came an infinity of times; it rained and reign
was so complete with every pleasure as if in love i sang.
pity you’re confused: ’twasn’t love. it was sex that dissolved me:
limo was body and mud. and long and shiny
and briny what i polished with my tongue marmo hard and pallina
smooth once whetted i never stopped saying sipa, was always in
position, in the mood, too much was never enough. i kept open
my arms my legs my eyes my lips moving lifted to heaven
my ass my hips. pilgrim, can you picture it? my tits. and it was
all wet. don’t cry. dry your ablutionary tears. no thing now can absolve me:
but i regret it not: i was so alive! o, to again have
someone’s occhi and fingers and penes on in me, to be
licked and sucked and eaten and fucked and debauched.

sigh and sign and eye hungry pilgrim, if only you could have watched.

FRANCESCA CAN TOO STOP THINKING ABOUT SEX, REFLECT UPON HER POSITION IN POETRY, WRITE A REAL SONNET.

pilgrim, i did not mean to be so loose
of tongue, so bold in all i loosely told
in my smut so smug, so overly sold.
i did not mean, pligrim, to traduce.

i apologize, i offer no excuse:
but, poet, though you have right to scold
it was highsouled you who made my mouth hold
what it held and tell what it told. a truce,

no, let’s call it an honor. mine is apt,
as far as long sentences go: my vice
in your verse will tempt others to try

and sing: readers, lovers forever rapt
and about to sweetly sigh: paradise!
thank you, poet, for keeping me alive.

ANY QUESTIONS NOW, PILGRIM?

(pilgrim, that’s no way to comment.)

funny, almost just like m.w.’s just as i wrote this insider-sent richard jones poem puts it: (finishing up the great corman/insidercomment/life/art/SEX strand/strain/stain) (insert something from lowell here!) (ha ha ha)...

And the Word

I find things inside books
borrowed from the library -
foreign post cards, rose petals,
opera tickets, laundry lists,
and, once, a bloody piece of cloth.
Today, inside a volume
of Cid Corman’s elegant poetry,
a snapshot -
a man in a dark nightclub
embracing a red-haired stripper.
The man grabs the woman
brashly about her waist,
displaying her nakedness
to the camera. The flash
illumines the man’s flushed face,
his single-minded lust
as he bends to touch
his tongue to her nipple,
while she, arching her back,
coolly turns to the camera,
her face flooded with light,
as if asking, “So,
what do you think
about the book you’re reading
now?”

or, FINALLY, and really REALLY finishing up (pun kinda sorta intended) :

as my old old old old friend m.f. used to say back in the seventies when we were like 13 or something and he was wearing his “i just laid my honey” yellow (not elephant but bee) (looked more like a wasp) t-shirt:

let us know/ our indiscretion(s) sometimes serve us well...

or was it:

it was real
and it was nice
but it wasn’t really nice!

ciao, o.