Poetry: Old Stuff

Out of boredom and my own curiosity I decided to delve deep into my external harddrive and read my old essays from college. I began to greatly miss my poetry class with the beautiful and inspirational Sandra McPherson. My Intro to Poetry and my Love and Desire in American Poetry classes were some of the best classes I have ever had. As I read file after file of English assignments I began to miss poetry. It has been so long since I studied and actually read poetry. I'm the type who believes poetry is everywhere, but I began to miss the words, to write the words...and it doesn't help to have Mazzy Star playing on my Pandora.

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Ode to Lady Lazarus

Number 3
Number 3
Lady Lazarus you’re a pity

Three times done
Nine more left
Cat got your tongue?
You only smile from denial
that can only be felt when you
shed your skin to make a lamp
for the red light to
illuminate your prostitute self
Roxanne you don’t have to put on the red light.
I don’t want this strip tease
your entertainment melodrama of
red hair. red flesh. red blood
red rum red rum red rum red rum
That’s what you want
to become a phoenix
a Venus
from the seashell of sticky pearl worms
rising from the ashes of depression
with death as your mission
to eat men with your breath.
Breathe it in.
What’s the use of this rage
this obsession with your own oppression?
He was just one man
a singular artifact
allowed yourself to be
reduced
subtracted
to bipolar mind and
manic depression-
negative.
So I carry this Nazi lamp
of your Jew linen skin
that says BEWARE BEWARE
But I don’t care
it’s a mere mellow dim
No,
You do not terrify
me
I pity you
I merely sigh
Perhaps I’m too normal for you
Your Being
too tough to chew
these words
your own kidney curd
red and fleshy fresh
that is
Your Reality
which confuses me
with intriguing poetry of
pure insanity
becoming sanity
with each stanza
a line
of poetry that doesn’t rhyme
cannot rest and mold in my mind
the subjective. the relative. the reactive
relative reality
(un)reacted by me,
a little girl
who simply cannot understand

Number 3
Number 3
Lady Lazarus—
how ‘bout pitying me?

(Can you say EMO? Although I am proud to have written it...now for some real poetry....)

On The Stairs
Constantine P. Cavafy

As I was going down those ill-famed stairs
you were coming through the door, and for a second
I saw your unfamiliar face and you saw mine.
Then I hid so you wouldn't see me again,
and you hurried past me, hiding your face,
and slipped inside the ill-famed house
where you couldn't have found pleasure any more than I did.

And yet the love you were looking for, I had to give you;
the love I was looking for -so your tired, knowing eyes
implied-
you had to give me.
Our bodies sensed and sought each other:
our blood and skin understood.

But we both hid ourselves, flustered.




(I love this poem. Simple, and it goes beyond sexual and straight to desire. Not to mention the eye-lock super glance of possible sexual attraction but maybe isn't sexual attraction and I might be over-analyzing my own life but I might be too cynical-- has happened to me a number of times and I'm too stupid to do anything about it because I'm a doubting Debbie.)