Vitamin D

I need to love you
Better, like I do the sun
On a cloudy day

I will wear

your body

like a hand sewn quilt

of dissonant dreams,

fall asleep and

make love beneath them,

until the stitching comes

undone.

If the distance

between us

sounds like an alarm

a cold draft in the night,

I will take you,

a stone

warmed by the fire

to place beside my heart.

dig

every breath
is an excavation

land is sifted
through intricate sieves
we examine every shard
expose bones

what we unearth
are given names
this is love
the search for hidden things

tearing it down

am I home  less

without you

you

the walls

and the windows

no longer

me

the nomad

resting inside

no longer

the fine print

no one tells you

that freedom

initially

feels nothing like flight

it is a plunge

falling headfirst

the air invades

your gaping mouth

arms and legs

are severed from your body

you become a seed

scattered violently

into the air

hoping for

fertile ground

my poem for January

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It's the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

San Francisco Weddings

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a beautiful wedding.

Natives of San Francisco were all oohs and ahhs when I said that the ceremony and reception would be held at the historic Fairmont Hotel on Nobb Hill. It was definitely worthy of all the commotion. And the celebration - a mix of Chinese and American - was really spectacular. I loved the lion dancers. I loved the hydrangeas. And the weather was perfect.

Congratulations Shirley and Tom! And thank you Jessica for being an awesome date!

french 45

the poem comes
from wonder
the i don't know
of you

years come
pages are torn
the pain in between
is our muse

love is not this
what is
is not written
love lives to be known

now
is who i am
tomorrow
can be yours

Love.Interpretations.Four

Today a poet commented on an old post with a poem. It absolutely made my day. This poem has been in my heart for awhile - enjoy.

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

- W.S. Merwin

Love. Interpretations. Two

What got me about this piece was the last part. The idea that in the end we are like runners, racing against our own time. I understand that part.

But, who is this poem about? That's where I'm stuck.

Is this about someone with many lovers? Or is this about someone in a monogamous relationship that is without love?

The first time I read it, I thought, yes, we are alone in this universe. It's a powerful and empowering idea. But then I read it again, and I couldn't help but feel sad in the end. There's beauty in making love. There's even beauty when we attempt love and fail.

And the idea that we are alone within a universe full of so many constellations. Hmm.

Sex Without Love
By Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Love. Interpretations. One.

Unhinged.
Racing against ones own best time.
A fish hook.

Those are lines running through my head. Each line are bits of what I remember from one poem. And they all include love. All interpretations, wildly different, and unsettling. Love tangled and intersecting with everything else: history, religion, running, fishing? How bizarre. Just as it is so often, so bizarre in life.

Each poem leaves me feeling like I ran several miles with the author, like I experienced the one thing or the many things that might have caused them to write what they did. Every time I read one, I have to catch my breath. They leave me feeling more confused about what love or life is, can be, should be, etc.

Here's the first. Enjoy - I'm off to bed.

Horizontal Geography Lesson
by Ariel Robello

your bed is the edge of the world
where we lie
unnumbered
unhinged
tracing the outline of your United States map

you are determined to know their capitols and order
rainbow quilt of stoic rhombi
how free the coastal states
their furthest seams defined only by volcano and sea

my index finger trails the Rio Grande
its mud bleeding down my chest
your thumb leaves coyote tracks
guides for those that follow

this land is ours

as the politicians sleep through our anarchy
we buy back California for my grandfather
Louisiana for yours
here manifest destiny dare not brand its legend
arrows pointing toward an imagined west
a muted south, a lonely east, a frozen north

all trains are caught still
no freeways flap close enough to wake us
this night reparations are collected in pores
opened by mutual love for a fifty-first state
free state shape of waning moon or twin bed
state with room enough for two

Word: Love

Quoting Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. the naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated.

Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause - the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical.

An act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise it is not love. Only by abolishig the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love which that situation made impossible. If I do not love the world - if I do not love life - if I do not love people - I cannot enter into dialogue.

That quote just breathed new life into me. Word. Word. Word!