Cocoon For A Skeleton
Clothes: to compose
The furtive, lone
Pillar of bone
To some repose.
To let hands shirk
Utterance behind
A pocket's blind
Deceptive smirk.
To mask, belie
The undue haste
Of breast for breast
Or thigh for thigh.
To screen, conserve
The pose, when death
Half strips the sheath
And leaves the nerve.
To edit, glose
Lyric desire
And slake its fire
In polished prose.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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Clothes Have No Memories (for Doreen)
Your most prized dress
must confess
that it
cannot
remember
the swell of your breast
the rise & fall of your breathing.
Clothes have no memory.
It is Winter now and your summer
frock has totally forgot
the sheer sunny shockingness of being
(underneath it all)
absolutely knickerless.
Kisses like butterflies
alight high (high)
on your inner thigh (thigh) !
Clothes have no memory.
Your bra
unhooked & unhinged
cannot really recall
the thrill of it all
as my hands caresss
create your breasts.
Clothes have no memory.
Clothes have no memory
...but I do.
poem by Dónall Dempsey
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Thanksgiving
The man who stands above the bird, his knife
Sharp as a Turkish scimitar, first removes
A thigh and leg, half the support
On which the turkey used to stand. This
Leg and thigh he sets on an extra
Plate. All his weight now on
One leg, he lunges for the wing, the wing
On the same side of the bird from which
He has just removed the leg and thigh.
He frees the wing enough to expose
The breast, the wing not severed but
Collapsed down to the platter. One hand
Holding the fork, piercing the turkey
Anywhere, he now beings to slice the breast,
Afflicted by small pains in his chest,
A kind of heartburn for which there is no
Cure. He serves the hostess breast, her
Own breast rising and falling. And so on,
Till all the guests are served, the turkey
Now a wreck, the carver exhausted, a
Mere carcass of his former self. Everyone
Says thanks to the turkey carver and begins
To eat, thankful for the cold turkey
And the Republic for which it stands.
poem by Mac Hammond
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Never
Suddenly, desperately
I thought, "No, never
In millions of minutes
Can I for one second
Calm-leaving my own self
Like clothes on a chair-back
And quietly opening
The door of one house
(No, not one of all millions)
Of blood, flesh and brain,
Climb the nerve-stair and look
From the tower, from the windows
Of eyes not my own: ...
No, never, no, never!"
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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O
Old women look intently at Nothing when the doctor
announces a cancer, dark fruit, under the
shrunk left breast.
Girls' hands hold Nothing when the train sucks their
men from the platform and scoops them down the
slipway of rail.
Nothing beats in deafened ears on the empty and
godless altars of mountain tops.
Nothing is the final strength of the strong: the
last poison on the crumpling lips of the weak.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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Epilogue
"Why can't you say what you mean straight out in prose?"
Well, say it yourself: then say "It's that, but more,
Or less perhaps, or not that way, or not
That after all." The meaning of a song
Might be an undernote; this tree might mean
That leaf as much as trunk, branch, other leaves.
And does one know till one begins? And let's
Look over hedges far as eyesight lets us,
Since road's not, surely, road, but road and hedge
And feet and sky and smell of hawthorn, horse-dung.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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The Beat, The Heart
lover, soldier,
companion, fit.
fire, branches,
ocean, shell.
breast, thigh,
feet, dreams.
the key, the hand,
the wind, and the echo.
fury, stillness,
wound, medicine.
the tongue, the soul,
the beat, the heart.
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Epitaph On A Disturber Of His Times
We expected the violin's finger on the upturned nerve;
Its importunate cry, too laxly curved:
And you drew us an oboe-outline, clean and acute;
Unadorned statement, accurately carved.
We expected the screen, the background for reverie
Which cloudforms usefully weave:
And you built the immaculate, adamant, blue-green steel
Arch of a balanced wave.
We expected a pool with flowers to diffuse and break
The child-round face of the mirrored moon:
And you blazed a rock-path, begun near the sun, to be finished
By the trained and intrepid feet of men.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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Wet City Night
Light drunkenly reels into shadow;
Blurs, slurs uneasily;
Slides off the eyeballs:
The segments shatter.
Tree-branches cut arc-light in ragged
Fluttering wet strips.
The cup of the sky-sign is filled too full;
It slushes wine over.
The street-lamps dance a tarentella
And zigzag down the street:
They lift and fly away
In a wind of lights.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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Epitaph For Our Children
Blame us for these who were cradled and rocked in our chaos;
Watching our sidelong watching, fearing our fear;
Playing their blind-man's-bluff in our gutted mansions,
Their follow-my-leader on a stair that ended in air.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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If I Were Tickled By the Rub of Love
If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.
Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.
Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with greet girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the loin
Nor the outspoken grave.
If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.
This world is half the devil's and my own,
Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.
And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his sex
From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.
And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.
poem by Dylan Thomas
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Renewals
I place my hands on you
feeling your body stiffen from anticipation
unused to warm hands probing
yet hesitantly hoping
that Body would come alive again.
I let my fingertip glide
along your shoulders
electric skin explodings
collar bone stiffening
mouth pouty
as I kiss
your nape
settling there like home;
you exhale
as I
surrender to your heaving front
leaving no part of it untouched
in its quivering quiverings
in its exploding satiations
exalting our souls
breathings synchronized
we move from
side to side
with tight-against-me glide
massage oil allows.
Now more insistent
I pull you to me
touching first
at your two points
then a lingering body press
thigh to thigh
breast to breasts
your eyes slowly closing
soft lips plying
soft skin erecting
my mouth gliding across
nape
down to diaphragm
and beyond
lips availing
knees weakening
bodies moistening
in the warm night;
touchings
from the inside out
helpless two
inside
the Lovers Arch
first
concave
then convex
melding hearts
at one again
on our anniversary
renewing our bodies;
wedding vows.
poem by Lonnie Hicks
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Music
This shape without space,
This pattern without stuff,
This stream without dimension
Surrounds us, flows through us,
But leaves no mark.
This message without meaning,
These tears without eyes
This laughter without lips
Speaks to us but does not
Disclose its clue.
These waves without sea
Surge over us, smooth us.
These hands without fingers
Close-hold us, caress us.
These wings without birds
Strong-lift us, would carry us
If only the one thread broke.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Metho Drinker
Under the death of winter's leaves he lies
who cried to Nothing and the terrible night
to be his home and bread. 'O take from me
the weight and waterfall ceaseless Time
that batters down my weakness; the knives of light
whose thrust I cannot turn; the cruelty
of human eyes that dare not touch nor pity.'
Under the worn leaves of the winter city
safe in the house of Nothing now he lies.
His white and burning girl, his woman of fire,
creeps to his heart and sets a candle there
to melt away the flesh that hides from bone,
to eat the nerve that tethers him in time.
He will lie warm until the bone is bare
and on a dead dark moon he wakes alone.
It was for Death he took her; death is but this;
and yet he is uneasy under her kiss
and winces from that acid of her desire.
poem by Judith Wright
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Betrayal
If a man says half himself in the light, adroit
Way a tune shakes into equilibrium,
Or approximates to a note that never comes:
Says half himself in the way two pencil-lines
Flow to each other and softly separate,
In the resolute way plane lifts and leaps from plane:
Who knows what intimacies our eyes may shout,
What evident secrets daily foreheads flaunt,
What panes of glass conceal our beating hearts?
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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The House of the Life: The Kiss
What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
Or seizure of malign vicissitude
Can rob this body of honour, or denude
This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
With these my lips such consonant interlude
As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
I was a child beneath her touch, -- a man
When breast to breast we clung, even I and she, --
A spirit when her spirit looked through me, --
A god when all our life-breath met to fan
Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
Fire within fire, desire in deity.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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The Kiss
What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
Or seizure of malign vicissitude
Can rob this body of honour, or denude
This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
With these my lips such consonant interlude
As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
I was a child beneath her touch, -- a man
When breast to breast we clung, even I and she, --
A spirit when her spirit looked through me, --
A god when all our life-breath met to fan
Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
Fire within fire, desire in deity.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Sonnet VI: The Kiss
What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
Or seizure of malign vicissitude
Can rob this body of honour, or denude
This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
With these my lips such consonant interlude
As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
A god when all our life-breath met to fan
Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
Fire within fire, desire in deity.
poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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A Fire Within My Heart (Vengeance)
There is a fire in my soul, it has burnt me to the bone
There is a fire in my heart, it has melted flesh to stone
There is an inferno in my breast, it rages out of control
There is a firestorm in my chest, it has consumed my being whole
There is a fire in my heart, it has melted flesh to stone
There is a rage with in my soul, vengeance will by my own
There is a burning in my mind, for death I am hell-bent
There is a desire in my conscious, filled with devilish intent
There is a fire within my soul, and it rages just for you
This fire burns with anger, may it guide my sword hand true.
poem by Tim Vallie
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An Instrumental
There was honey on the thigh of her bow
crying in time with his piano steps,
dripping down their hands
into sticky dilated pools
of heavy hymn.
Melting bedroom walls
sucked seconds
off the face of time
like absinthe
Heated heaving breast breaths banged like
heads
on
glass,
the crescendo of notes
digging into the backbone,
and evaporating into
ecstatic echo's of remembrance.
poem by Sara Fielder
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June Sick Room
The birds' shrill fluting
Beats on the pink blind,
Pierces the pink blind
At whose edge fumble the sun's
Fingers till one obtrudes
And stirs the thick motes.
The room is a close box of pink warmth.
The minutes click.
A man picks across the street
With a metal-pointed stick.
Three clocks drop each twelve pennies
On the drom of noon.
The birds end.
A child's cry pricks the hush.
The wind plucks at a leaf.
The birds rebegin.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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