Let us go then, you and I
When the moon is high in the sky
Like an eye wide with delight.
Let us walk upon white shores
Buffeted by restless seas,
Waves which flood you
With an overwhelming question.
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the men are talking low
Of the women who come and go.
The phosphorescent coral lights
A question to the blank sky.
And indeed there will be time
To create a boneshell cage
A house for your hunger to
Greet the hunger that you meet.
In the room the men are talking low
Of the women who come and go.
And indeed there will be time
To urge you, urge you to dare,
but time, also, to see you
Knot your fists in your hair...
In a minute there is time
For the essence of possibility
To vanish in an instant.
Oh, I have known them all already, known them all--
The mendicant beachcombers cursing
The reticence of the lip of shore
And the sheer thrust of coursing wave, both.
And I have known the eyes already, known them all-
Eyes that let me see to the prurient bottom, bare
(but beneath the moon, glazing over with a hard stare!)
Is it the memory of his flight
Which calls forth all my spite?
And how should I begin?
And why should I presume?
Shall I say I have been
In the bowels of convention
And watched Pride choke on its own desire?
I am the song that answers itself,
Borne lightly on the swallowing sea.
You sleep so peacefully!
Should I, heeding Dionysus,
Elucidate and then impersonate the crisis?
I am a priestess; the greatness of the matter is
There is never a seizure of momentum
When fear clutches at my ribs and then folds up.
It is worth it to say
I bear witness, I believe
Though they have all said,
"Finally, you know, this is meaningless."
I am no Ophelia
Though they would have me be.
I've been to the nunnery;
Rutted and worshipped at the altar of Love,
Always with courage to play the fool.
I grow young ... I grow young...
I shall reinvent the world with my tongue.
Darling, grow your hair past your shoulders
Or shave it off.
Eat cherry after cherry and then eat a plum.
Wear trousers slit to show beneath
A tiny crescent of naked peachflesh.
When I sing, my voice marries the air
Which is to say,
If some thread of melody carries and reaches,
Quickens you on the narrow strip of this beach,
Darling, I am always singing. Listen.
Bewilderment
Is amazing to be thrust into a
Gravid forest and seized with
Green knowings the nerves
Not pinioned to anything but a
Pulse cantering soft in the throat
It nickers against my face with
Mint and fennel breath coltish
All eager and unknowing limbs
Splayed in tall grass
I relish this injunction to be
Wild and wilder to throw off
What is known and have all
Clamber into my arms hungry
And confiding have all
Drift into my breath like dawn all
Gallop into me clatter and hoof
Burst its blossoms tendril and seed
Give me everything as it is
A slow gong of astonishment
Sounding its blandishments
Tousled breezes fierce confusions
Bemused leanings vague wanderings
Clenched and unclenching diastole and systole
I will stand in them
All pliant and
Exultant as a sapling
What I Want
Wanting is a wound happy enough
To bleed into its own mouth.
I want to be white but
I was born a red penance, a sweet stain
Which speaks ten dead languages,
Tap dances before strangers like
A jigger of venom which
Erases its own raw face.
I want to stop living like a scab:
Hard, shiny, born around a hurt.
I want my open palms
To be dashed with blue, calm.
I want to learn how to receive
With no shackles of acceptance
Jailing my heart.
I want people to untangle in
The sharp, sticky briar patch of my voice.
I want to scale myself to daring new chromatics.
I want to diffuse into this world like mist.
I want to plant my roots in lava
And throw sparks heavenward.
I want new language like fire.
I want to live like a torch.
I want to be neat as a Japanese rock garden and
Lush as a rainforest.
I want to mend I want to break I want to bend.
I want to know what it's like to be a daisy.
I want the soft, scarred part of me understood
Without apology or apotheosis.
I want desire and decision
To recreate me, daily.
Litany of the Inconsolable
If I could bleed like a straight line into the
Horizon which blinks into swallowing dark
If I could accept if I could open my arms
Wide if I could stand unflinching
If I could unclench fit in my own pocket
If I could pay attention
If needs didn't cram my throat with
Fistfuls of choked air
If I could stay breathless
In the bare jugular dark
If needs could be struck like flint
Flaming put to use
If I could step into the ventricular sun
Recast my shadow
If I could eat my past
Furrow it for planting
If I could ease the urgent now
Into this heart so long untenanted
If I could mentor my kaleidoscope eye
Leave what I see unresolved
If I could run away like rain
Vanish into a green plinth of ether
If my smile was not ragged
Too torn to wear
How to Love a Poet
This is the way I am
Waiting for you:
Making silk from my guts
As a matter of course.
There is only patient, daily construction:
Flinging out my substance in lambent threads.
Tomorrow I tear down these connections and
Spin my tenuous place again.
Meanwhile, dexterity might lure you.
You might admire the loom I am,
You might see my weaving make
A tightrope or a net.
If, in these delicate acrobatics
You note some grisly, vital grace,
Come closer.
--By Magdalena Alagna