Daily Poems for July 23, 2009

Okay, I'm recycling (in part) one title. There are two poems today.

Pillow Talk

Now we lie down with the clouds like turbans
above our heads and discuss rain, thunder, the electric
shock of lightning, which is not like
the moment when a birth begins,
which is called lightening—
the child moving into the birth canal,
the storm of labor about to commence.

We discuss the uses of roses, bloom,
thorn, stem, which is not like the thick root
of the penis seeking its earth,
sometimes in the woman—
the rose sometimes double anthered.

We discuss the music on the radio,
chanting Mongolians, wailing Cherokee,
the Beatles singing, Judy In The Sky With Diamonds,
which are not like the diamonds in the open mines
of Venetia, where a woman wearing rubber boots and a head scarf
sits down on the slag while she eats her lunch.




Consider the Lilies of the Seine


The young people’s choir from Paris pours through the door of the coffee shop
looking more like a flood of lilies than mere human beings, long stemmed with shining faces.

They hum along with the strange world chant on the satellite radio station,
reaching for harmonies out of instinct. They wrap their leaves around their tourist maps.

One lily with pale blonde hair across her shoulders accepts a deep French kiss
from a brown-haired lily whose arms wrap around her from behind,

whose hands flutter across her ribs while she leans back to take his kiss,
her hair forming a pale gold sea foam V down her back.

Her pale pink lipstick finds the tiny crevices of his lips. The other lilies
order coffee and ignore the lovers, because afterall, they are all lilies from Paris.

But the rest of us sigh silently. We sigh and wish.
We sigh and wish.