Joyce Carol Oates

Here is another amazing poet. I figure its just as important to share the work of those that inspire as well as my own. This poem is dark, but I relate to the emotions tangled inside the sensation of self-mutilation.


Passing An Afternoon
by Joyce Carol Oates

Blood transforms the warm bath water
and, in it, I see weakly
that this was a mistake.
The razor's cut is not deep, nevertheless
the blood rushes out happily in the warm
water as if kin to it, the same
tender substance.

Rising
a new person
transformed with an icy
sense of error
I go to the sink and turn on cold water
which is not friendly to blood.
The cut is deeper than imagined.
It hurts.

Splashes on the pale gold tile,
bright red bursts like sunlight,
like exclamation points—Another Error!
I wrap a small towel around my wrist.
A small towel indicates a small error.

Soaked through
the towel's gold is tarnished.
There is an innocent joy in the blood's
flow that the towel and I cannot absorb.
These spurts, worth twenty dollars a pint
on the market, sense themselves unmarketable now.

Another towel wrapped tight in terror
slows everything down. On a blue velvet
love seat from which love has wandered I
sit waiting. I am an angel with an alert
backbone. I am purified from the business
of panic.

Sharon Olds is a genius

I recently discovered Sharon Olds in a poetry class last year. She is an amazing poet so I decided to share some of my favorites because they deserve to be read over and over again.


Last Night
by Sharon Olds

The next day, I am almost afraid.
Love? It was more like dragonflies
in the sun, 100 degrees at noon,
the ends of their abdomens stuck together, I
close my eyes when I remember. I hardly
knew myself, like something twisting and
twisting out of a chrysalis,
enormous, without language, all
head, all shut eyes, and the humming
like madness, the way they writhe away,
and do not leave, back, back,
away, back. Did I know you? No kiss,
no tenderness---more like killing, death-grip
holding to life, genitals
like violent hands clasped tight
barely moving, more like being closed
in a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming
I groan to remember it, and when we started
to die, then I refuse to remember,
the way a drunkard forgets. After,
you held my hands extremely hard as my
body moved in shudders like the ferry when its
axle is loosed past engagement, you kept me
sealed exactly against you, our hairlines
wet as the arc of a gateway after
a cloudburst, you secured me in your arms till I slept---
that was love, and we woke in the morning
clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was
the morning after love.


The Pope's Penis
Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver sweaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat -- and at night
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.


The Promise
Sharon Olds

With the second drink, at the restaurant,
holding hands on the bare table,
we are at it again, renewing our promise
to kill each other. You are drinking gin,
night-blue juniper berry
dissolving in your body, I am drinking Fumé,
chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are
taking on earth, we are part soil already,
and wherever we are, we are also in our
bed, fitted, naked, closely
along each other, half passed out,
after love, drifting back
and forth across the border of consciousness,
our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand
tightens on the table. You’re a little afraid
I’ll chicken out. What you do not want
is to lie in a hospital bed for a year
after a stroke, without being able
to think or die, you do not want
to be tied to a chair like your prim grandmother,
cursing. The room is dim around us,
ivory globes, pink curtains
bound at the waist—and outside,
a weightless, luminous, lifted-up
summer twilight. I tell you you do not
know me if you think I will not
kill you. Think how we have floated together
eye to eye, nipple to nipple,
sex to sex, the halves of a creature
drifting up to the lip of matter
and over it—you know me from the bright, blood-
flecked delivery room, if a lion
had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes
binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them

Advice to Close Lovers

Don’t take for granted
Every hug, kiss, smile, touch,
Everytime you hear his voice,
In the same room, so close you can smell his breath.
Don’t get annoyed
At the little things he does,
You’ll miss them when he’s gone.
Embrace the little moments of boredom,
Solitude, staying in, watching TV,
Nothing to do, but
There’s no one you’d rather do nothing with.
Smile when he snores,
That sweet exhausted lullaby,
Without it beside you, you would not sleep so enjoyably.
Savor the companionship, the warmth,
The fitting half to your whole,
Don’t ever let go,
And treasure every second
You are entwined in his strong arms,
For living life without him
His smile, his laugh, his snoring,
His warmth, his kiss, his touch….
Is unbearable.

Somersaults

Stars shine empty in this dark night
Arms outstretched to the ghostly moon
Hoping to reach far enough to grab ahold,
To something, anything that I know we both share.

You are m i l e s a w a y ,
Surrounded three sixty by murky waters,
But you’ve never left your original place;
Home sweet home in this aching chest
Beating, and broken, but my heart never rests.
Infinite, it drums on, to the rhythm of your laughter,
Doing somersaults at the sight of your smile,
Bare, cracking, and cold when you’re so f a r.

I hope when you look at the moon tonight,
You’ll see me holding tight amongst the stars,
And smile and laugh to the beat of my heart
As through the night sky we both do somersaults.