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cinaedSince I promised you I'd share the poetry we're learning about in Contemporary Literature. *grins* All four poems are by Stephen Dobyns and are...interesting. And contain mentions of sex in a sometimes graphic nature. Man, my teacher's on crack. *grins*
White Thighs
White thighs like slices of white cake –
three pre-teenage girls on a subway
talking excitedly about what they will
see and do and buy downtown, while near them
a man stares, then pulls back to look
at the slash and jab of the graffiti.
He sees himself as trying to balance
on the peak of a steep metal roof
but once again he turns to watch
the girls in the grown-up dresses,
their eye shadow and painted mouths. How
white the skin must be on the insides
of their thighs. He can almost taste
their heat and he imagines his teeth
pressed to the humid flesh until once more
he jerks back his head like yanking
a dog on a leash, until he sees his face
in the glass, gray and middle-aged. The night,
he thinks, the night – meaning not simply
night-time but those hours before dawn
when he feels his hunger as if it were
a great hulking creature in the hallway
outside his door, some beast of darkness.
And again he feels his head beginning
to twist on its hateful stalk. White thighs –
to trip or slip on that steep metal roof:
his final capitulation to the dark.
How to Like It
These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept—
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.
Tenderly
It's not a fancy restaurant, nor is it
a dump and it's packed this Saturday night
when suddenly a man leaps onto his tabletop,
whips out his prick and begins sawing at it
with a butter knife. I can't stand it
anymore! he shouts. The waiters grab him
before he draws blood and hustle him
out the back. Soon the other diners return
to their fillets and slices of duck. How
peculiar, each, in some fashion, articulates.
Consider how the world implants a picture
in our brains. Maybe thirty people watched
this nut attack his member with a dull knife
and for each, forever after, the image pops up
a thousand times. I once saw the oddest thing --
How often does each announce this fact?
In the distant future, several at death's door
once more recollect this guy hacking at himself
and die shaking their heads. So they are linked
as a family is linked -- through a single portrait.
The man's wobbly perch on the white tablecloth,
his open pants and strangled red chunk of flesh
become for each a symbol of having had precisely
enough, of slipping over the edge, of being whipped
about the chops by the finicky world, and of reacting
with a rash mutiny against the tyranny of desire.
As for the lunatic who was tossed out the back
and left to rethink his case among the trash cans,
who knows what happened to him? A short life,
most likely, additional humiliation and defeat.
But the thirty patrons wish him well. They all
have burdens to shoulder in this world and whenever
one feels the strap begin to slip, he or she thinks
of the nut dancing with his dick on the tabletop
and trudges on. At least life has spared me this,
they think. And one -- a retired banker -- represents
the rest when he hopes against hope that the lunatic
is parked on a topless foreign beach with a beauty
clasped in his loving arms, breathing heavily, Oh,
darling, touch me there, tenderly, one more time!
Topless
At first I went just for the guns,
Stopping every six months for a few beers.
One liked to hang upside down as she stripped
Off her clothes. Another attached matches
To her nipples and lit them. Good natured
Local girls and the music going boom boom.
Then they'd stroll through the all male audience,
Ruffle a few bald heads, rub against
Some bellies, bounce on a couple of laps-
All for the dollar some fellow would stick
Between their g-strings and oddly platonic flesh.
One looked like an old girlfriend and even
Seeing her fully dressed would send me tumbling back
To late nights in parked cars. But soon I began
Speculating about the spectators. Many
Were regulars, older guys in work clothes,
Sipping beers, out of shape, skidding between
Their first and second heart attack or stroke.
I was touched by the attentiveness of the girls,
Their jokes and small talk. You know those
Mechanical toys, wind up rabbits or bears,
My kids have a couple, how they scuttle across
The floor only to end up in a corner, banging
Their fragile tin bodies against the baseboard?
These guys were like that. And the girls,
In a small way, would set them straight again.
Just recently I watched a plump girl straddle
Some codger's lap, hands on his shoulders head
Thrown back, prodding the guy with her questions.
So how's Billy, she asked, did he get a job yet?
And Betty Lou, did she decide to keep the kid?
While as she spoke, she swung her shoulders, left
And right, swinging her big breasts, so this guy,
With his chin poked directly between her nipples,
Kept getting punched, left breast, right breast,
Slapping across his face, knocking off his glasses,
Banging his goofy grin as his head bounced back.
Not slapping any sense into him: too late for that.
Just one of the peculiar ways the world can plant
A smooch when you least expect it. How's the wife,
How's the back? How're the arches holding up?
Pow, pow- piston strokes from some bright engine
So that briefly the girl seemed the very center
Of the world's own merry-go-round that had to be
Just then whanging around through the night sky:
The colored lights, the spectral horses, the lions
With the rubber teeth, and clinging to their seats
All these old guys, all the timorous and beaten
With their gray faces ill-fitting toupees
And sappy smiles. Nothing bad at the moment,
Nothing scary or mean; life without the sharp parts,
Thrills without regret as the tumbledown music
Zigzagged like lightening across the fretful dark.
White Thighs
White thighs like slices of white cake –
three pre-teenage girls on a subway
talking excitedly about what they will
see and do and buy downtown, while near them
a man stares, then pulls back to look
at the slash and jab of the graffiti.
He sees himself as trying to balance
on the peak of a steep metal roof
but once again he turns to watch
the girls in the grown-up dresses,
their eye shadow and painted mouths. How
white the skin must be on the insides
of their thighs. He can almost taste
their heat and he imagines his teeth
pressed to the humid flesh until once more
he jerks back his head like yanking
a dog on a leash, until he sees his face
in the glass, gray and middle-aged. The night,
he thinks, the night – meaning not simply
night-time but those hours before dawn
when he feels his hunger as if it were
a great hulking creature in the hallway
outside his door, some beast of darkness.
And again he feels his head beginning
to twist on its hateful stalk. White thighs –
to trip or slip on that steep metal roof:
his final capitulation to the dark.
How to Like It
These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept—
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.
Tenderly
It's not a fancy restaurant, nor is it
a dump and it's packed this Saturday night
when suddenly a man leaps onto his tabletop,
whips out his prick and begins sawing at it
with a butter knife. I can't stand it
anymore! he shouts. The waiters grab him
before he draws blood and hustle him
out the back. Soon the other diners return
to their fillets and slices of duck. How
peculiar, each, in some fashion, articulates.
Consider how the world implants a picture
in our brains. Maybe thirty people watched
this nut attack his member with a dull knife
and for each, forever after, the image pops up
a thousand times. I once saw the oddest thing --
How often does each announce this fact?
In the distant future, several at death's door
once more recollect this guy hacking at himself
and die shaking their heads. So they are linked
as a family is linked -- through a single portrait.
The man's wobbly perch on the white tablecloth,
his open pants and strangled red chunk of flesh
become for each a symbol of having had precisely
enough, of slipping over the edge, of being whipped
about the chops by the finicky world, and of reacting
with a rash mutiny against the tyranny of desire.
As for the lunatic who was tossed out the back
and left to rethink his case among the trash cans,
who knows what happened to him? A short life,
most likely, additional humiliation and defeat.
But the thirty patrons wish him well. They all
have burdens to shoulder in this world and whenever
one feels the strap begin to slip, he or she thinks
of the nut dancing with his dick on the tabletop
and trudges on. At least life has spared me this,
they think. And one -- a retired banker -- represents
the rest when he hopes against hope that the lunatic
is parked on a topless foreign beach with a beauty
clasped in his loving arms, breathing heavily, Oh,
darling, touch me there, tenderly, one more time!
Topless
At first I went just for the guns,
Stopping every six months for a few beers.
One liked to hang upside down as she stripped
Off her clothes. Another attached matches
To her nipples and lit them. Good natured
Local girls and the music going boom boom.
Then they'd stroll through the all male audience,
Ruffle a few bald heads, rub against
Some bellies, bounce on a couple of laps-
All for the dollar some fellow would stick
Between their g-strings and oddly platonic flesh.
One looked like an old girlfriend and even
Seeing her fully dressed would send me tumbling back
To late nights in parked cars. But soon I began
Speculating about the spectators. Many
Were regulars, older guys in work clothes,
Sipping beers, out of shape, skidding between
Their first and second heart attack or stroke.
I was touched by the attentiveness of the girls,
Their jokes and small talk. You know those
Mechanical toys, wind up rabbits or bears,
My kids have a couple, how they scuttle across
The floor only to end up in a corner, banging
Their fragile tin bodies against the baseboard?
These guys were like that. And the girls,
In a small way, would set them straight again.
Just recently I watched a plump girl straddle
Some codger's lap, hands on his shoulders head
Thrown back, prodding the guy with her questions.
So how's Billy, she asked, did he get a job yet?
And Betty Lou, did she decide to keep the kid?
While as she spoke, she swung her shoulders, left
And right, swinging her big breasts, so this guy,
With his chin poked directly between her nipples,
Kept getting punched, left breast, right breast,
Slapping across his face, knocking off his glasses,
Banging his goofy grin as his head bounced back.
Not slapping any sense into him: too late for that.
Just one of the peculiar ways the world can plant
A smooch when you least expect it. How's the wife,
How's the back? How're the arches holding up?
Pow, pow- piston strokes from some bright engine
So that briefly the girl seemed the very center
Of the world's own merry-go-round that had to be
Just then whanging around through the night sky:
The colored lights, the spectral horses, the lions
With the rubber teeth, and clinging to their seats
All these old guys, all the timorous and beaten
With their gray faces ill-fitting toupees
And sappy smiles. Nothing bad at the moment,
Nothing scary or mean; life without the sharp parts,
Thrills without regret as the tumbledown music
Zigzagged like lightening across the fretful dark.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 04:16 am (UTC)