awritersruminations:

She pressed her lips to mind. 
                              — A typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone’s lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she’s missed.
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek’s ear,
speaking sense. It’s the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. We married as soon as we could.

—Stephen Dunn, ”The Kiss” 

(via youveescaped)

How to Fall in Love

tarts:

Start by leaving home. It’s not where the heart is,

but where the hard edge is. When ice begins
to ebb from shoreline,
freeing mangy marsh grass,
leave.

And as you pick up speed, let your life arc out
away from you.

Realize that you don’t know where you’re going
and that the weather changes often.
Steer between the stars
like songbirds coming back at night.
Listen to the whirring
of a thousand, thousand miles of dark.

Remember you are ancient,
that once you walked out of the sea
and in the trees became another thing.
Know you can again.

Become three kinds of lonely.

Light a torch.
Leave a trail of handprints on the walls.

Or start by staying put.
Be a whisper looking for a mouth: luna, luna, luna.
Sit underneath the porch light.
Eat walnuts and persimmons.
Spread your red-edged wings.
‘Calling time’ begins near midnight.

Be hungry. Want.

Women are locks. Men open them for doors.

—Susan Elbe

(Source: diodepoetry.com)

Sorry

twicedailypoetry:

I can’t remember the 2nd 
time I hurt you—

it was dark & someplace
in that darkness
was the thing I did. 

You weren’t the target, I
know that, though
you might’ve been the bow
& the tension
I really think is love.
Nothing ever sends me away.
I’ve got your pain
in my pocket &
it glows in the dark

and in the light
it’s the softest kind
of singing woman’s voice.
That’s who you are. To me, I mean.
Let me hold your shoulders
back so you look
arrogant & beautiful
welcoming me into the warm
sad party. Let this
be the unfortunate hat
I hang outside the door
if only you will
allow me to come in.

[1979]

Eileen Myles

Jim Fahey by Eileen Myles

I’m deep into The Importance of Being Iceland, a collection of travel essays in art, all by EM herself. I got it in September, but I only started reading it in early October. I have dog-eared a lot of pages, and tumbl’d a lot of quotes. This book is resonating with me, in significant ways, and often. Here are excerpts that really hit me, from an essay she wrote about going to therapy. Jim Fahey is the name of her therapist. 

I had a job, but I didn’t have enough money for say a hundred dollars a week. I needed a cheap shrink. The whole thing was beyond me, but I really was in trouble and was willing to pay somebody to be on my side. That was how I felt about it. Everyone was either Jewish or middle-class in new York and they all had shrinks. So I was going into the inside room in the world that I knew. It was not church, it was not God. I was pretending there was an inside of me, and it could be found in a room in the world. (page 256) 

I had amazing moments with him [Fahey]. I remember the morning, honey coloured, the room got mellow and deep when he asked me Eileen can you tell me any time in your life when you did feel safe. It was like a thunderclap. Before my father died. It was like my life folded. I did have an inside. I just hadn’t been in it for most of my life. I had a home. It was gone. It was devastating. (page 257)

I was doing a performance and I invited him. I didn’t know if it was right. but I did. And there I was performing and looking down I saw Jim and I’m not sure it was a good feeling. I didn’t know if it was right. And when we talked about it he told me that after I performed I looked at the audience and I smiled, but it was an uncomfortable smile. Not open, maybe kind of false. I think I smiled in response to that and he said like that. I felt like I knew what he was talking about but I didn’t need to have him tell me about how creepy I was. I mean it was already hard to have this kind of dry heart, or feel you looked that way, like a hard window. (page 258)