To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell 1681
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs, George MacDonald (1824 – 1905)
Come
Home.
Come. And Be My Baby, Maya Angelou – April 1928
The highway is full of big cars
going nowhere fast
And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn
Some people wrap their lives around a cocktail glass
And you sit wondering
where you’re going to turn.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we’ve got a week got a week or two
The papers is full of every kind of blooming horror
And you sit wondering
What you’re gonna do.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
Why did I dream of you last night? Philip Larkin – 1939
Why did I dream of you last night?
Now morning is pushing back hair with grey light
Memories strike home, like slaps in the face:
Raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog
beyond the window.
So many things I had thought forgotten
Return to my mind with stranger pain:
– Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
Who left the house so many years ago
Mad Girl’s Love Song, Sylvia Plath – 1953
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
Frame, Linda Gregerson – May 1980
The tree that had patiently framed our view
turned on us once and swelled
with an issue of birds. Each orange breast
too large for its spine, they threatened to drop
and splatter like so many fruits. I’m frightened
of birds in the first place. In Illinois
they stay the right size and only come out by ones
and twos, but I won’t go barefoot. Remember
the crack of a wing in the grass? It was warmer
than grass.
I still think the window kept us straight. Twice
a day the light congealed, we could or couldn’t
see the bridge for fog. Either way was reassuring.
And if someone had asked, the branch was too parochial, we knew it
no? making order out of all that sky.
When better dyes arrived in the wagons of entrepreneurs,
the Navajo weavers knew craft and a past
from nostalgia: they began on brighter rugs.
At one point in the border of each, an erratic line
a single stitch wide joins the outside
to the pattern at the heart. On a spirit line,
does the spirit come in or depart? Our birds
had been eating what the rain turned up,
new rain got rid of the birds. I’m thinking of you.
Natalia Tola Maldonado – August 2022
between
21
and
23
nothing can ever be be held like it’s
yours
with one hand, life sweeps out
every incoherent thought
thinking we can own
the nights we invent on void, purple
computer algorithms
internet fantasies
and the violent under eyes that follow
only in my dreams i own the
demons who sing my loneliness
the anarchist street art in my city
the fools gold of loose change in my pockets that i’ll use to reach you apartment
in 25 minutes
and so,
because now we can’t own anything
we enjoy inventing
like how with your long fingers,
you tweaked the gold clock handles
backwards
to add an extra milliseconds
to the 9:03 PM when
you whispered to me that love is a distraction
from the worlds ticking atomic bombs
yet the
impersonal skyscrapers blur into a million of colours and soft words
because i am leaning closer to you
and your blood-red hair is falling into my neck
then
i break my scripted first date persona
to tell you that you’re cute
stop it you said
your words tickle me
so i chose to invent
18th floor
rooftop doctrines
like thinking i can save you just because unlike you, i’m a romantic
i chose to believe
everything important starts out small
small like the birds with tiny black eyes
yellow, dumb jokes
perched on the top of aging houses
following us everywhere we go
in a world with filled where these
short-lived creatures can fly (and we can’t)
in a world with broken wings
where
broken beer bottles
in the ocean will outlive every single one of the wishes
a world with so much
improbability
i choose invent that our love is true
because when i touched the side of your faces
the lights of all the terrifying buildings
imploded
in the darkness that followed
if anyone lit up a match
they would see you and me at your dinner table, just staring at each other
a portrait of promises waiting to come out of ur lips
i like you
i like men who cry,
take coffee with milk
and hold my purse in long walks in the dark
Natalia Tola Maldonado – September 2022
love is a white powdered drug
sold by white hollywood
and saying i don’t love writing about these tiny packages
is a white coloured lie
so i’ll continue to enjoy
sweet cocktails and pathetic men
(some of lives best tasting ironies)
(so easy to enjoy in warm sips
like there’s unspoken meanings)
with round brown eyes
wooden like café tables
(you told me mochas are the
designated hot girl drink)
so watching me visit your coffee shop
where they sell small oil paintings and
smaller double espressos
like i forgot you have a shift today
just to get an artists high and
write about your long fingers
in my poetry , i’m not afraid of falling in love with them
or the number of curls
in that silly head of yours
where you think that owning indie pop vinyls
or saying you are
a man of few fucks
somehow widens the distance between you being beautiful or
forgettable
and how i’ve longed to be in the underbelly of your
pretense
find something in you that seems real outside affection in the darkness when your accent splits you open
but maybe true, romantic love
only exists in the pretty names of your
red bedroom candles
or the brackets of poetry
i wrote about you after our first summer date
only to find it again months later
like ready-made fate and not
chance
when young people dream,
they sleepwalk into the creation
or new universes
For My Darling, Joe van Wonderen – January 29, 2023
I miss having your words in my head
I miss feeling your hair between my fingertips
I miss the way you smile after you laugh
I hope you’re happy
I hope it all works out lovely for you
I hope I’m being honest
I want to cry
I want to surrender
I want you Back
I wish that that last line didn’t remind me of Frank
I wish that that last line didn’t remind me of the summer when you told me about that song
I wish that that last line didn’t remind me of you
I am sorry that you were always so far
I am sorry that I hurt you
I am sorry that I have so much to be sorry for
I trust you know that you’re still in my phone
I trust you know that you’re still in my dreams
I trust you know that you belong with me
I thought we’d grow as we go
I thought you’d always be there
I thought I’d always be there
I hope that you’re happy, Darling
That love melts my eyes and knots my heart
I really hope you’re happy, as much as it stings all over to know it won’t be with me
I wish I had a poetic way to end my whine
But, I don’t, I miss you desperately
Lost In Translation, Joe van Wonderen – January 29, 2023
I want to see you as you see yourself
What happens as soon as you close the door
How do you laugh when no one else is around
What do you change when I enter your view?
What do you hide?
What lies do you tell?
How do you shudder when there’s no one to hold you?
Do you smell the flowers you’ve seen one thousand times?
When do you wake up with tears in your eyes?
I wish I could read you
Read you better than I read myself
What is in your margins and between your lines
Countless lifetimes could be spent on one of yours
Endless tomes filled with what I’ll never know
I only hope to get lost with you
Victor Grincourt – February 2023
What of you?
And so what have you become?
What of your thoughts, hopes, words?
What of those who not long ago would have wondered the same?
Was it all in vain? Despair? Or was it because of a held pain you could not bear.
I can’t be there as much as I yearn to.
It’ll only be a while before you learn too.
What of the time it’ll take?
What of you?
Cover image: Natalia Tola Maldonado
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