Hey, what a surprise!
I don’t care for Valentine’s Day. In that vein, I would rather eat a bowl of dirty fingernails than wear red on Valentine’s Day. But, as I said to my pal Deborah today when she asked me why I’m not wearing all black, wearing all black is such a cliché, so I compromised and wore a black shirt, my beloved knee-high black platform boots, and a brightly-colored patchwork skirt I bought during my last trip to London. Wearing this skirt on this day was a very deliberate move on my part, because London was my first true love, and I’m all about the symbolism. Oh, and I’m also wearing my dangly razor blade earrings, because again: symbolism. Love will slice you to ribbons, dont’cha know.
Deborah’s happily married, and thus today isn’t a horrorshow for her, but she was still eager to go with me to Red Robin so I could drown my Valentine sorrows in a chocolate milkshake and huge veggie burger. And the waiter totally thought we were on a date
.I’m not a complete asshole about love; I do still believe in it. So I thought I’d share some of my favorite love/sex quotes and poems from my
quotations collection (not all are fully cited; I’ve been trying to track down full citations for yonks, often to no avail). Here we go:
My religion is well known to those who know me. I believe in bodies, arms entangling and untangling. I believe, and I know it to be so, that there are so many curves and hollows in a single body that none of us can come to know them all within a single lifetime. I believe in one to one and one on one. No wine or magic, no hand-me-down Bible can improve on that. I believe in spring, but only if I’m rolled up in a pillow or holding some well-loved face in my hands... More often I’m a spectator, meaning I’ve no reason to believe in anything save what I see. But I do. –Rod McKuen,
Alone…here was a boundless sensual freedom, theirs for the taking, even blessed by the vicar—
with my body I thee worship—a dirty, joyous, bare-limbed freedom, which rose in his imagination like a vast airy cathedral, ruined perhaps, roofless, fan-vaulted to the skies, where they would weightlessly drift upward in a powerful embrace and have each other, drown each other in waves of breathless, mindless ecstasy. –Ian McEwan,
On Chesil BeachAnd when you appear
all the rivers sound
in my body, bells
shake the sky,
and a hymn fills the world.
Only you and I,
only you and I, my love,
listen to it.
–Pablo Neruda, “The Queen”
…you and I together have gone down a single river
with linked mouths filled with salt and blood…
–Pablo Neruda, “Furies and Sorrows”
I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.
–Pablo Neruda, “Twenty Love Poems: XIII”
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
–Pablo Neruda, “Twenty Love Poems: XIV”
And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth, and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable. –Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, letter #4
He takes my heart and sets its pulse. Everything else is easy. –Alla Nazimova (as quoted in Margaret Wettlin’s
Fifty Russian Winters)
We could have grown roots, we stood there so long. We could have grown wings and risen like angels up through the tunnel of the stump and out into the sky, still talking in that mute language we suddenly discovered we shared, the fluent and precise language of tongues. –Jean Hegland,
Into the ForestAll these words are just a front. What I would really like to do is chain you to my body, then sing for days and days and days. –Hafiz
We who were loved will never
Unlive that crippling fever.
–Adrienne Rich, “After a Sentence in ‘Malte Laurids Brigge’”
I loved her body and I could never have enough of regarding it as a world in which I could wander and wander without fear. –Christer Kihlman,
The Blue MotherThere was no engine on earth whose power compared with the want of one body for another. –Barbara Kingsolver,
Prodigal SummerThe sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer. –Henry Havelock Ellis
At the heart of sex is something intrinsically spiritual, the desire for a union so primal it can be called divine. –Sam Keen
The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved,
“You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside love, the resurrection-place.”
–Rumi, “I Have Five Things to Say”
…when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist,
nor any other.
–ditto
In love there are two things: bodies and words. –Joyce Carol Oates
Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name. –Butterfly, in
The Last UnicornI love one man, and you know it; I love him while awake; while sleeping; living; dead; love him. And if I can’t have him then God doesn’t exist, Reverend Sigurður; and you, the archpriest, don’t exist, nor does the bishop, nor my father, nor Jesus Christ; nothing—except for evil. –Halldór Laxness,
Iceland’s BellAs long as we are sitting here together we have everything. –ditto
I don’t just want
your heart
I want your flesh,
your skin
and blood and bones,
your voice, your thoughts
your pulse
and most of all your
fingerprints,
everywhere.
–Isobel Thrilling, “Lover”
We are each the love of someone’s life. –Andrew Sean Greer,
The Confessions of Max TivoliWhatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same… –Emily Brontë,
Wuthering HeightsSo much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was sustenance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream. –Jodi Picoult,
Nineteen MinutesLove does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction. –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
Wind, Sand, and StarsLove doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new. –Ursula Le Guin,
The Lathe of HeavenWhere there is great love there are always miracles. –Willa Cather,
Death Comes for the Archbishop…later, she would tell him that there had been a crackling magic in the air and he would tell her that his desire at that moment was so intense that his groin ached.
When she finally felt that desire, she was surprised above everything else. She did not know that a man’s thrusts could suspend memory, that it was possible to be poised in a place where she could not think or remember but only feel. –Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
Half of a Yellow SunThis was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles. –ditto
…then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down…and kissed him. And the world cracked open. –Agnes de Mille
Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen… –Anne Sexton, “Knee Song”
A mouth that is kissed loses no flavor, but, like the moon, is renewed. –Giovanni Bocaccio,
The DecameronYou will remember: it was you who kissed me that evening in the parlor. I tasted that last coil of smoke held in your mouth; it tasted like a word, like a yes. –Andrew Sean Greer,
The Confessions of Max TivoliAs the adjective is lost in the sentence, so I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—you have enchanted me with a single kiss which can never be undone until the destruction of language. –Kenneth Koch
In the depths of our hearts we are together,
in the cane field of the heart we cross through
a summer of tigers,
watching over a meter of cold flesh,
watching over a bouquet of inaccessible skin,
with our mouths sniffing sweat and green veins
we find ourselves in the moist shadow that drops kisses.
–Pablo Neruda, “Furies and Sorrows”
Half-sleeping,
my body pulls toward yours—
desire a long oar dipping
again and again
in this night’s dark rain.
–Jane Hirshfield, “Half-sleeping...”
You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share one coffin.
–Kuan Tao Shêng, “Married Love”
We leave the bed where your fingers
are a wide surprise, where your tongue
tells me slow stories. I watch you,
in the daylight, bring your hand
to your face, to your mouth. I tuck
pieces of myself behind
in the tangle of our bodies.
–Kim Ports, “Desire”
How is it that our two bodies
made only of flesh and bone
ignite with this fire
yet do not burn?
–Terra Hunter, “Wanting You”
A million light years and a million more would not give time enough to store that small second of eternity when I took you in my arms and you took me in yours. –Jacques Prevert
My body was a lovely bonfire burning night and day on that tropical coast. –Pablo Neruda
You began to be irreplaceable for me long before I had ever heard of you. –Roger Sale
What sex is, we don’t know, but it must be some sort of fire. For it always communicates a sense of warmth, of glow. And when the glow becomes a pure shine, then we feel the sense of beauty. –DH Lawrence
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out. –Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In my hands your
body is a hymnal
open to the familiar
page of praise. I
sing you in the ancient
rhythm that brought
us all here to make
what we will of
this world, I sing
you in tongues and
in silent awe of our
loving, certain only
of imminent separation.
–Anne K. Smith, “Praise”
And you will always be with me.
I shall never cease to be filled with newness,
Having you near me.
–DH Lawrence, “Wedlock”
Desire is relentless. No matter what science says, it appears not to need our digits, or our gonads, to persist. What does this say about sex? That it is so much more than the hormones which sustain it? That, like life, sex has a soul beyond the body in which it’s housed? That, like God, it is invisible, indefinable? Should we pray to sex? Can we be saved by sex? One thing’s for sure, you cannot kill sex. Carve out the clitoris, cut off the testicles, bind the feet until they are putrid with pain, and still the urge keeps coming, we keep coming; alive. –Lauren Slater
Desire confounds us, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist, pantheist, agnostic…desire confounds us. Our vocabulary of the erotic spirit is often impoverished. –Sam Hamill, preface to
The Erotic Spirit: An Anthology of Poems of Sensuality, Love, and LongingErotic love is one of the highest forms of contemplation. –Kenneth Rexroth
…I don’t believe that in order to be interesting or meaningful, a relationship has to work out—in fiction or in real life. In fact, I consider a forced happy ending in a book almost as bad as a real couple who get married even though their friends know they shouldn’t. … Now, believe me, I love swelling music and kisses at sunset as much as the next woman; when I was growing up, my family crowded around the TV to watch The Love Boat. But as I’ve gotten older, I realized that when it comes to love, it’s the journey that matters as much as the destination. And the messiness is part of what makes romance so fascinating in the first place. Movies and books lead us to believe that if a relationship doesn’t end in marriage, it didn’t count, but that’s absurd. Even unrequited crushes can provide hard-won insights into ourselves and our lives. –Curtis Sittenfeld
Whether you’ve been in a relationship for ten years or ten weeks, you know how crazy love can make you. On any given day you’re insanely happy, maniacally miserable, kooky with contentment, or bonkers with boredom—and that’s in a good relationship. Why do you think we call it being “madly” in love? You have to be a little nuts to commit yourself, body and soul, to one other person—one wonderful, goofy, fallible person—in the hope that happily-ever-after really does exist.
And yet we can’t help ourselves. We throw ourselves into love time and again, even though we know real-life love is no fairy tale. We trade in our sexy glass slippers for soccer-mom sneakers, or pretend we didn’t hear (or smell) that gastric emission Prince Charming made in his sleep. We stress out and make up and do it all over again—and why? Because nothing makes us feel more alive than the exhilaration and exasperation of everyday love. –Mary D. Esselman and Elizabeth Ash Vélez,
Love Poems for Real LifeNo matter how long you’ve been together or how well you think you know each other, you still need to romance your partner, especially in stability. Don’t run off and get an extreme makeover or buy into the whole red-roses-and-champagne bit. Instead, try being kind, receptive, and respectful, practicing what Henry V would call “plain and uncoined constancy.” You simply need to show your partner, often and in whatever tender, goofy way you both understand, that his or her heart is your home and that you plan to be there permanently. –ditto
Real love can whirl you from the glory of ecstasy from the hell of misery and back again, but that’s just how it goes in real life, and aren’t we lucky to be part of that dance? –ditto
Good God, what a night that was,
The bed was so soft, and how we clung,
Burning together, lying this way and that,
Our uncontrollable passions
Flowing through our mouths.
If I only could die that way,
I’d say goodbye to the business of living.
–Petronius Arbiter, “Good God, What a Night That Was”
…and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes
and then he asked me would I yes…
and first I put my arms around him yes
and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes
and his heart was going like mad
and yes I said yes I will Yes.
–James Joyce,
UlyssesWe touch Heaven as we lay our hand on a human body. –Friedrich Leopold
Breathe your life into my soul and know the greatest story ever told is you and I... –Neil Diamond, “Create Me”
I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes
muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
body a sex—surely this
is the most blessed time of my life...
–Sharon Olds, “True Love”
We are two sides of the same magic... –Unicorn, in
The Last UnicornI long for him most
during these long moonless nights.
I lie awake, hot,
the growing fires of passion
bursting, blazing in my heart.
–Ono No Komachi
that boy who told me: pass
some honey from your hive
I answered: give me back some
on your tongue
& he got angry, yelled:
shall we two sin against the living God?
I answered: let your sin,
sweet master, be with me.
–Samuel Ha-Nagid
Think how unspeakably sweet
the taste of snow at midsummer,
how sweet a kind spring breeze
after the gales of winter.
But as we all discover,
nothing’s quite as sweet
as one large cloak
wrapped around two lovers.
–Asklepiados
I have a thousand images of you in an hour; all different and all coming back to the same…And we love. And we’ve got the most amazing secrets and understandings. Noël, whom I love, who is so beautiful and wonderful. I think of you eating omelette on the ground. I think of you once against a skyline: and on the hill that Sunday morning. And that night was wonderfullest of all. The light and shadow and quietness and the rain and the wood. And you. You are so beautiful and wonderful that I daren’t write to you…And kinder than God. Your arms and lips and hair and shoulders and voice—you. –Rupert Brooke, to Noël Olivier
Now in the quiet of the evening and in the warmth of the bed a drugged and dreamy feeling steals over me and I am with you once more. Lying here I love to think you near me, your arms encompassing me, my head buried in your shoulder, catching the rhythm of your breathing and living for a few exquisite moments as one being—I said I was dreaming, darling, but I am so delightfully intoxicated, relishing such heavenly moments with you that I wish it to go on forever. –Live Lewis, to Leslie Couzens
When you’re young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it’s barely the beginning. –Peter Høeg,
Smilla’s Sense of SnowTo lie with you under a ceiling bright with shifting water shadows—that’s good. To drowse in flower-scented darkness—that’s good. But best of all is rain—drumming, roaring, gushing from the guttering—and we two warm and dry and safe together, in each other’s arms. –Pam Brown
i.
in those first minutes
before light starts making sense
we uncurl and kiss
ii.
snowflake on your tongue
my tongue on your burning thigh
your thigh: a sweetness
v.
fleeting, frail, formless:
love is nothing more than breath
in late December
vi.
in hindsight, starvation
is the closest approximation
to love
–JLB
I.
I would kiss your nub of collarbone
and trail my lips down your salt-
solid spine, tracing the words
“all my days remaining”
in the hallow of your back.
And before morning, we could ignite a fire
greater than any planets’ suns.
II.
What are words
but a means of conjuring up flesh?
It is your fingers I want, not words;
your fingers tangled in my matted hair,
your tongue trailing across my heart,
the damp nape of your neck resting
against my shoulder.
But words are sustenance in times of hunger...
III.
This chaos is as maddening
and gentle as the moths
that thump against porch lights
on summer evenings
and all I want, sweet boy,
is a moment of respite,
a moment when I can remember
that sometimes joy is nothing more
than a fleeting stillness,
an interlude from longing.
–JLB
Winter skies are cold and low,
with harsh winds and freezing sleet.
But when we make love beneath our quilt,
we make three summer months of heat.
–Tzu Yeh, “Song”
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. –Mignon McLaughlin
Sex contains all, bodies, souls,
Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the
seminal milk,
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,
beauties, delights of the earth…
–Walt Whitman, “A Woman Waits for Me”
And if I can’t speak about my love—
if I don’t talk about your hair, your lips, your eyes,
still your face that I keep within my heart,
the sound of your voice that I keep within my mind,
the days of September rising in my dreams,
give shape and colour to my words, my sentences,
whatever theme I touch, whatever thought I utter.
–C.P. Cavafy, “December, 1903”
We seem to have a deep life together apart from all other people on earth, and which we cannot show, explain, or impart to them. At least my affection seems to isolate me in the deepest moments from all others, and it makes me speak with my whole heart and soul to you and you only. And perhaps this isolation is one reason why deep love makes one feel—at least in some moments—so religious. –Walter Bagehot to Eliza Wilson
…you can’t come into the room without my feeling all over me a ripple of flame, and if, wherever you touch me, a heart beats under your touch, and if, when you hold me, and I don’t speak, it’s because all the words in me seem to have become throbbing pulses… –Edith Wharton, to W. Morton Fullerton
Sex and beauty are inseparable… –DH Lawrence, “Sex Versus Loneliness”
Historically, intercourse was the act through which male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis—knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man’s only bridge from earth to heaven. …it’s important to remember that the ancients’ view of sex was entirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life—the ultimate miracle—and miracles could be performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made her sacred. A god. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit—male and female—through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God. … It’s a deeply sacrosanct ceremony. –Dan Brown,
The Da Vinci CodeWhen you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. –John Hurt, in
Captain Corelli’s MandolinThey’re at that stage where so much desire streams between them,
so much frank need and want,
so much absorption in the other and the self and the self-admiring
entity and unity they make—
her mouth so full, breast so lifted, head thrown back so far in her
laughter at his laughter,
he so solid, planted, oaky, firm, so resonantly factual in the headiness
of being craved so,
she almost wreathed upon him as they intertwine again, touch again,
cheek, lip, shoulder, brow,
every glance moving toward the sexual, every glance away soaring
back in flame into the sexual—
that just to watch them is to feel again that hitching in the groin, that
filling of the heart,
the old, sore heart, the battered, foundered, faithful heart, snorting
again, stamping in its stall.
–CK Williams, “Love: Beginnings”
From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven. And when two souls that are destined to be together find each other, their streams of light flow together and a single brighter light goes forth from their united being. –Baal Shem Tov
I cannot breathe without you. –John Keats, in a letter to Fanny Brawne
Our love is like the misty rain that falls softly, but floods the river. –African proverb
Your love is comfort in sadness, quietness in tumult, rest in weariness, hope in despair. –Marion Garretty
Where there is love there is no sin. –Montenegrin proverb
As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can’t describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect moment of rose-colored joy. –Oscar Wilde,
The Picture of Dorian GrayWhat a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow. –Nathaniel Hawthorne
We two form a multitude. –Ovid
Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder. –Abraham Lincoln
You would not believe it; I sat
at the table with my family,
with my father saying grace, then
solemnly passing the bowls of
corn, of beans, the heavy
platter of turkey and dressing.
I filled my plate and lifted
my fork to my mouth,
but no matter what I put in,
it wasn't what I tasted,
not the creamed potatoes,
not the smooth brown crust
of bread. It was you my mouth
remembered, the familiar musk
of your sex, its smooth heat,
its quick fullness. My mind was
a reel flashing pictures inside
my skull, and there was no detail
missing. I sat like a drunk
trying to act sober. I chewed
and swallowed while in my thoughts
I knelt; I gave thanks for you.
–Anne K. Smith, “Giving Thanks”
in the mirror in front of me
my hands on you
your hands reach back
as we stand dripping
slippery and delicious
our tongues and we
begin again
the long slow dance
we have perfected
like pilgrims returning
home again
to the promised land.
–Charles Rossiter, “Your Body Glistens from the Bath”
In bed this morning
you tucked into the cove of my belly
our feet slipping past each other like fish
I reached out to embrace
the flat rock of your back
and carved out our names
with my tongue
–Teresa Blagg, “In Bed This Morning”
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine
the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you and this
is what it is like, or what it is like in words.
–Carol Ann Duffy, “Words, Wide Night”
As we made love for the third day,
cloudy and dark, as we did not stop
but went into it and into it and
did not hesitate and did not hold back we
rose through the air, until we were up above
the timber line. The lake lay
icy and silver, the surface shirred,
reflecting nothing. The black rocks
lifted around it into the grainy
sepia air, the patches of snow
brilliant white, and even though we
did not know where we were, we could not
speak the language, we could hardly see, we
did not stop, rising with the black
rocks to the black hills, the black
mountains rising from the hills. Resting
on the crest of the mountains, one huge
cloud with scalloped edges of blazing
evening light, we did not turn back,
we stayed with it, even though we were
far beyond what we knew, we rose
into the grain of the cloud, even though we were
frightened, the air hollow, even though
nothing grew there, even though it is a
place from which no one has ever come back.
–Sharon Olds, “Ecstasy”
The next day, I am almost afraid.
Love? It was more like dragonflies
in the sun, 100 degrees at noon,
the ends of their abdomens stuck together, I
close my eyes when I remember. I hardly
knew myself, like something twisting and
twisting out of a chrysalis,
enormous, without language, all
head, all shut eyes, and the humming
like madness, the way they writhe away,
and do not leave, back, back,
away, back. Did I know you? No kiss,
no tenderness—more like killing, death-grip
holding to life, genitals
like violent hands clasped tight
barely moving, more like being closed
in a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming
I groan to remember it, and when we started
to die, then I refuse to remember,
the way a drunkard forgets. After,
you held my hands extremely hard as my
body moved in shudders like the ferry when its
axle is loosed past engagement, you kept me
sealed exactly against you, our hairlines
wet as the arc of a gateway after
a cloudburst, you secured me in your arms till I slept—
clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was
the morning after love.
–Sharon Olds, “Last Night”
I watch her silhouette
in the green glow
of alarm clock light,
imagine the lace of freckles
draped across her back,
inhale the tumble of hair,
cataracting over shoulders.
I reach around,
feel her fullness,
slowly enter.
She molds to me
gentler than any cloud
has ever drifted
across a starlit sky,
and I am a prayer,
a ghost, a vapor,
nebulous as the night.
–Ed Stever, “Her Back to Me”
Your hair lost in the forest,
your feet touching mine.
Asleep you are bigger than the night,
but your dream fits within this room.
How much we are who are so little!
Outside a taxi passes
with its load of ghosts.
The river that runs by
is always
running back.
Will tomorrow be another day?
–Octavio Paz, “Last Dawn”
_________________________________________
Your body is a new country,
hidden landscape in cotton and chambray
that I want to travel with every vehicle I own:
hands, tongue, slide of silk.
Below, in the heat
and rush of wet, we’re learning again
how summer moves through the deep canyons,
stirring grasses and honeying fruit.
–Kim Ly Bui-Burton, “Poem for R.”
_________________________________________
Ten years of fitting our bodies together
and still they sing wild songs in new keys.
It is more and less than love: timing,
chemistry, magic and will and luck.
One plus one equal one, unknowable except
in the moment, not convertible into words,
not explicable or philosophically interesting.
But it is. And it is. And it is. Amen.
–Marge Piercy, “Implications of One Plus One”
_________________________________________
Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made out of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it—our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal—
Over the sky’s hot rim,
The day’s last breath in our sails.
Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.
–Pablo Neruda, “Drunk as drunk on turpentine...”
_________________________________________
If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this?
If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is,
or what “God’s fragrance” means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
Don’t try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.
When someone asks what it means
To “die for love,” point:
here…
–Rumi, “Like This”
_________________________________________
Two bodies face to face
are at times two waves
and night is an ocean.
Two bodies face to face
are at times two stones
and night a desert.
Two bodies face to face
are at times two roots
laced into night.
Two bodies face to face
are at times two knives
and night strikes sparks.
Two bodies face to face
are two stars falling
in an empty sky.
–Octavio Paz, “Two Bodies”
_________________________________________
I wanted you in the kitchen of my heart;
and there, after many cold lunches,
I found you; and there, like herbs
undressing in soup, I came to love you;
and there, like a delicate tea
of mangoes and marigolds your mouth
opened, and your words, flecked with gold
and the eroticism of your Latin blood,
flowed, like the blood I long for, into me.
And how could I lose you among these cups
and spoons, among these golden candles,
these jars of honey lined along the window?
And what forget-me-nots in winter
tie me to you still? I could die in this bread
I have made without you. For you I would burn
this dry brain for incense; I would
serve you the wine inside the night; I would
drink the sea to give you salt.
–James Tipton, “I Wanted You in the Kitchen of My Heart”
_________________________________________
All night I have slept with you
next to the sea, on the island.
Wild and sweet you were between pleasure
and sleep,
between fire and water.
Perhaps very late
our dreams joined
at the top or at the bottom,
up above like branches moved by a common
wind,
down below like red roots that touch.
Perhaps your dream
drifted from mine
and through the dark sea
was seeking me
as before,
when you did not yet exist,
when without sighting you
I sailed by your side,
and your eyes sought
what now—
bread, wine, love, and anger—
I heap upon you
because you are the cup
that was waiting for the gifts of my life.
I have slept with you
all night long while
the dark earth spins
with the living and the dead,
and on waking suddenly
in the midst of the shadow
my arm encircled your waist.
Neither night nor sleep
could separate us.
I have slept with you
and on waking, your mouth,
come from your dream,
gave me the taste of earth,
of sea water, of seaweed,
of the depths of your life,
and I received your kiss
moistened by the dawn
as if it came to me
from the sea that surrounds us.
–Pablo Neruda, “Night on the Island”
song heard most recently before posting:Big Girls Don’t Cry—Fergie (
Shut up; it’s what happened to be playing on the radio when I squealed into work an hour late this morning.)
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