There is a girl inside

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.
She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.
She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom
and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

Lucille Clifton

beneath the sea

What exists beneath the sea? I’d always pictured it in colours of emerald and aquamarine, where black velvet fish with sequined eyes swim among plankton. But, when my eyes adjust, I see gray stones, lost anchors, wet wood, buttons, hooks, and eyes, the salem witches who wouldn’t float, stars and stripes, missing vessels, windup toys, the souls of Romeo and Juliet, peaches, cream, pistons, screams, cages of ribs and birds, tunnels, nutcracker soldiers, satin bows, drugstore signs, Pandora box ripped open at its hinges.

Kelly Easton
The History of a Star

missing the summer

Already missing the summer and those wonderful outdoor games we played. So much fun to be had on sunkissed moorland. Dare to be different, and spin in the gleaming air like the naked spinningtop of a child from an earlier, older age – oh, morality was certainly in doubt! Sin pricks us all in that naked sunshine! We didn’t care. We were hunters under deep blue skies. And like some ancient saint my only blasphemy was in the thrust of groin and the stinging touch of leather on flesh.

offering herself

She was beautiful when she suffered; her eyes were deeper, her voice warmer, fuller; her dark beauty was simpler and more human. Her suffering had a quality of saintliness. It was her way of offering herself. I couldn’t see her suffer without telling her I loved her, as if love was the negation of evil.

Elie Wiesel
Day

Desire

The enormity of my desire
disgusts me.

Richard Siken
Birds Hover the Trampled Fields

talks with wolves

She talks with wolves, without knowing what sort of beasts they are:

“Where have you been all my life?” they ask.

“Where have I been all my life?” she replies.

Margaret Atwood
Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women

Sunday Stiffy

Morning Erection

His thoughts concealed under the tent of dreams
His youthful desires displayed on the canvas of life
His shame covered by the blanket of darkness
His manhood standing on the pedestal of freedom

Morning erection is a senseless display of desire
An ancient form of masculinity
An unconscious determination to make love
A brutal show of one’s agility and prowess

Morning erection is an unconscious usurpation of power
A clear revelation of the mysterious hand of the unconscious thought
A subversion of the entire conscious thought under the auspices of sleep
A direct challenge to the throne of consciousness
A pronouncement of the existence of an active subconscious entity
A rude display of arbitrary power

Kenneth Maswabi