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Posts Tagged ‘desire’

When I Asked the World to Wake Me

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 21, 2020| 2 Comments »

I didn’t really mean at 3 a.m.

with a the blood curdling scream

of a female mountain lion

caterwauling in the woods,

the violence of branches snapping and breaking

and giant beings crashing in the dark.

Why should I be surprised

that the sound of desire—

a powerful female shrieking for union—

should sound like the worst kind of pain?

The high pitch of yearning,

the strangled wail of want,

it haunts me all day, all day.

All day, primal need screeches in my blood.

I am wildly awake.

All day, no one else can hear.

*

To hear this amazing sound, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxo8X5uIWRE

(Note: If you have cats, put on your headphones or they will FREAK!!)

*

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Let’s Say They’re Gardeners

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 30, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

Guilt finds the seeds and buries them in April,

hiding them darkly so no one will see.

He waters them secretly.

The sun does what the sun will do.

The seeds sprout and he thins them,

unwilling to pluck them all,

unwitting that the ones that remain

grow stronger.

 

Desire brings fertilizer, tends to the leaves.

Her ladybugs devour aphid filigrees.

She talks to the greens.

In September she builds waterwalls

to shelter the near-ripened fruit.

She offers to share her tomatoes with you.

Take a bite, she says, her voice like sun.

You can’t stop with just one.

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For all my talk of surrender

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 15, 2015| 1 Comment »

and saying yes to the world as it is,
my body craves what it craves.
Oh this terrible, beautiful bright stitch of longing
sewn into my breath
with red, red thread,
it pulls, tighter and tighter,
then catches on something
deep in my core,
and some voice,
is it mine? insists,
more, more, I want more.

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What Icarus Knew

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 21, 2014| 4 Comments »

Of course I know
what happens to wax
when a woman flies
too close to the sun.
It has been done,
been done before
and it will be done
again, because
the first thing to melt
is the will to stop
flying toward
the most beautiful thing
you have ever felt.

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Again Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 16, 2014| 1 Comment »

Your prayer should be, “Break the legs of what I want to happen. Humiliate my desire. Eat me like candy.
It’s spring and finally I have no will.”
— Mathnawi, III (4391 – 4472), “Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion,” by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

I was supposed to pray
for broken legs. Instead,
I prayed for a train to take
me anywhere but here.
Years went by. The train
never came. Rabbit brush
and salt brush pushed up between the rails.
So I thought perhaps I should
pray instead for a horse, but remembered
soon after that I am afraid of horses
and don’t really know how to ride.
So I prayed for car and felt
pretty clever that I remembered
to pray that it come with a full tank of gas.
But the only road out of here
is so muddy, so slippery, so steep,
so riddled with rocks
that any car would soon be stuck.
So I started to pray for strong, strong
legs to carry my weight and take me
far. And I began to walk and grew stronger,
and walked and felt fulfilled, and
the more I thought I was finally in control,
the less I thought I needed to pray. But nowhere
I went was a place that I wanted
to stay. I ran faster and faster
from here to here, out of breath
and dizzy from searching, feet blistered,
body weary, I found a new prayer:
Break the legs of what I want to happen.
Humiliate my desire. You know how it is.
I was still. And it worked for a while—
the sweet release of failure. And then, in the quiet
spring of surrender, the sound came
far off but clear, the whistle of the train
just coming through a tunnel
on its way to somewhere.

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Desire

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 29, 2013| 2 Comments »

For today, desire
is like a toy train, and
when the wooden cars fall

off the track, it’s like the way
the map didn’t show just how steep
the trail would be, or perhaps it did,

but you told yourself it would be easier;
and when the trail begins to ease
it’s like the scent of lilacs or lilies—no matter

how deeply you breathe them in
you can’t get the sweetness to stay
with you, but when the sweetness

is at its deepest, it’s like the sound
of the rain on the window, it’s
rhythm is quick and unpredictable,

like the two new silvery minnows
bought for only thirty cents
that were meant to be food

for a bigger fish, and when
in the bowl with fake blue rocks
they flash and shift, well, that’s

a bit how desire is.

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Five Admissions

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 1, 2013| 2 Comments »

The truth is, we don’t really want to be free from desire or to admit that clinging to the pleasures of the senses—the taste of delicious food; the sound of music, gossip, or a joke; the touch of a sexual embrace—ends unavoidably in disappointment and suffering. We don’t have to deny that pleasant feelings are pleasurable. But we must remember that like every other feeling, pleasure is impermanent.
—Bhante Gunaratana, “Desire and Craving,” Tricycle Magazine

so soon I find it—
the bottom
of the potato chip bag

*

make us more bonobo
than chimpanzee, preferring
to fuck than fight

*

all night, the same
refrain after every bit of news:
April Fools

*

sound of flamenco
guitar, I will pay you a hundred poems
to play one more hour

*

missing this:
your lips, your lips, too long gone
between each kiss

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After Reading an Article on Protection from Unwholesome Dispositions, I Amuse Myself with Your Body Parts and am Doomed to the Fetters of the Cycle of Birth and Death

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 14, 2012| 4 Comments »

Contemplating the unattractive nature of the body debilitates sensual lust, the first of the five hindrances … By mentally dissecting the body into its organs, tissues and fluids, we see that “the mark of the beautiful” that fuels sensual desire is merely a subjective projection superimposed on a collection of unappealing parts.
—Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Four Protective Meditations,” Tricycle, Summer 2012

My dear, the Buddhist monk could not have known
when he suggests my mind dissect your parts
how beautiful your lungs, medulla, bones.

Such gold streams through your bile ducts! I’d clone
your pineal gland. Your thymus is fine art.
My dear, the Buddhist monk could not have known

the curve of your amygdale, how toned
your cerebellum, spleen so red so dark,
how beautiful your pancreas, your bones.

I’d make mosaics of your kidney stones
and build an altar for your muscled heart.
My dear, the Buddhist monk could not have known

how all your parts appeal so. I’ve grown
to love your splanchnopleura, liver marks,
your beautiful esophagus, your bones,

your hypothalamus, untamed hormones.
My favorite? Man, I don’t know where to start.
I’m sure that Buddhist monk could not have known
how beautiful your ganglions, your bones.

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