Sunday, August 29, 2010

we all need somebody to lean on


Lean On Me - Al Green

Some times in our lives, we all have pain, we all have sorrow.
But, if we are wise, we know that there's always tomorrow.

Lean on me, when your not strong, and I'll be your friend,
I'll help you carry on. For, it won't be long, 'till I'm gonna need
somebody to lean on.

Please, swallow your pride, if I have
faith, you need to borrow. For no one can fill those of your
needs, that you won't let show.

You just call on me, brother when you need a hand,
We all need somebody to lean on.
I just might have a problem that you'll understand,
we all need somebody to lean on.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

moonrise by sylvia plath

full moon on oak st. beach, chicago


Moonrise

Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves.
I'll go out and sit in white like they do,
Doing nothing. July's juice rounds their nubs.

This park is fleshed with idiot petals.
White catalpa flowers tower, topple,
Cast a round white shadow in their dying.

A pigeon rudders down. It's fantail's white
Vocation enough: opening, shutting
White petals, white fantails, ten white fingers.

Enough for fingernails to make half-moons
Redden in white palms no labor reddens.
White bruises toward color, else collapses.

Berries redden. A body of whiteness
Rots, and smells of rot under its headstone
Though the body walk out in clean linen.

I smell that whiteness here, beneath the stones
Where small ants roll their eggs, where grubs fatten.
Death may whiten in sun or out of it.

Death whitens in the egg and out of it.
I can see no color for this whiteness.
White: it is a complexion of the mind.

I tire, imagining white Niagaras
Build up from a rock root, as fountains build
Against the weighty image of their fall.

Lucina, bony mother, laboring
Among the socketed white stars, your face
Of candor pares white flesh to the white bone,

Who drag our ancient father at the heel,
White-bearded, weary. The berries purple
And bleed. The white stomach may ripen yet.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Mapplethorpe's Young Man with Arm Extended



She still had that same postcard framed, a black and white print of Mapplethorpe's Young Man with Arm Extended, on the left bedside table. She fell asleep to observing the man in the picture. He leaned out of the left corner of the frame, his arm outstretched, so that only a triangular fraction of his torso and a single black nipple were exposed. The corner of his left eye was hidden. His skin as naked and luminous as his smile. She traveled along the dark, bony shadows along his neck, gliding down the white mass of his arm. It was long and sleeveless and relaxed and it made her want to stretch her muscles out until she was light and thin and empty. The dark crevices along his fingers, neck, armpit and mouth and eyes breathed deeply into the bare wall behind him, into the bare space between him and her. To find happiness in emptiness, in a white cleanse. Was his hand playfully reaching out to her? No. She was convinced that he found happiness because he reached for everything, for anything, for nothing really.