cavafy, they said

they said to read cavafy,
that classicist, nostalgic and horny.
or lonely. or something.

there’s a restlessness there,
echoing yours    i think
it’s more a willful aimlessness,
a willingness to abandon
a train of thought, a history
filmed with dust, a longing
for something lost, something
with weight, shadowy gestures,
desire gained so rarely, and thinly.

ah, cavafy. you’re always on the edge
of saying something.
you meander amongst ruins,
burdened with longing, burdened.
tell me what you want.
is it really only beautiful bodies?
i am unconvinced. is it beauty?
are you being coy?
or merely guarded?

lovely wanderer, let’s stop playing games.
let me take your hand.
let us walk together. 

consider the lilies

consider the lilies.

consider that somehow they aren’t overwhelming.
consider that they don’t assault the senses,
that they aren’t garish – like old ladies
wearing too much make-up;
that they don’t season every breath
with their sickly sweet smell,
like flesh rotting.

consider painting them instead.
consider how that hides
our sense of the body.
makes it pleasant, even.

a new(ish) poem

as this moment
this moment you hold

as this moment passes
you hold it bright & shimmering pulse

how to invest?
in eternity?

how to hold it tender’d cradle
breathly deeping

 

national poetry month, day thirty: edward van vliet

The sky is beautiful tonight.
Or not the sky, really. The stars?
Not that either.

Somewhere a father is
putting his children to bed,
kissing them on their foreheads;
somewhere a young girl is saying her prayers;
somewhere a baby is crying,
someone is having an argument about who to blame.
Somewhere a young couple
is passionately making love for the first time,
a couple with many years under their belts
is relaxing in the usual habits,
or balancing the budget,
or planning a vacation.
Somewhere music is playing,
and a young man is fingering the frets of his guitar,
a young woman is exploring the edges of her voice.

Maybe it’s the silence
(though I don’t really enjoy silence).
Maybe it’s that there is stillness,
and that there is no regret right now,
only memories.
I taste them again,
roll them around my mouth,
tonguing their surfaces,
smoothing out the ridges.

I, too, have been someone
acquainted with the night.
I used it as a veil,
cultivated secrets – hidden exchanges.

I have taken to my bed beautiful women,
and less beautiful women;
I have embraced beautiful boys
and used them according to my own desires.
Though it really wasn’t about desire.
Nor beauty. Nor loneliness
(though I know you were thinking it).

I spent many nights
dancing under lights, or not.
I was content to dance alone;
enjoying the sensation of my body
moving through space,
the presence of other bodies,
the sweat and voices –
how to marry impulse and gesture,
the call and response, calculated displays.

Some nights I sat in my living room or on my bed,
high, and wept.
Some nights I wandered aimlessly along the city streets.
Some nights I was held a prisoner of hope –
mine or others’
- grasping at dreams or rumours,
looking for purchase.
Sometimes I crawled, or leapt –
I stumbled more often than I would care to admit.

I learned this:
all things are under pressure.
Sometimes they hold firm.
Sometimes they crumble.
All you can do is wipe your hands
- hopefully they will come clean –
and just keep moving.

That is comforting,
if not beautiful.

 

April 2014

national poetry month, day twenty-nine: robert currie

For a Poet Facing the End

You live in a narrow bed and wait for death
while I lift and work with your limp left arm
and listen to your steady, rasping breath,
the ventilator easing our alarm.
Your right arm in turn, your legs, your feet
I life, rotate and rub--it's exercise
or passes for that in one who once was fleet
in mind and body, though now your thighs
are shrunken to a fraction of your mind,
which rails and shakes like any frantic child
who rages at his parents--dumb and blind--
and needs only half a chance to run wild,
but you, your voice silenced, a final drought,
you mourn for every poem you can't get out.

Currie, Robert. "For a Poet Facing the End" Poet to Poet. Roorda, Julie and Elana Wolff, eds. Toronto: Guernica Editions, Inc., 2012. 137.