Tag Archive for "Poetry" | The Cure for Anything

Sonnet XI {Poetry}

Tuesday, May 12, 2015 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday Neruda, Poetry Permalink

Here’s a spicy one! Neruda is relentless with his sensual metaphors. Relentless in a good way. 😉

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Oranges { Poetry}

Monday, February 23, 2015 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday, Uncategorized Poetry Permalink

“I wake up in the middle of the night
and I text you things like “why aren’t you in my bed?
come eat a bowl of oranges off of me”.
I don’t know what this means.
I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.
Something about you and I in bed
with sticky fingers
and wet mouths
is appealing to me even in half-sleep.

Maybe oranges are a metaphor for life.
Maybe I still don’t know how many seeds I’m gonna find in you.
Maybe oranges are just supposed to mean summer heat
because I’m sick of all this cold, cold, cold.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Maybe the only thing that means something
is that I am always waking up in the middle of the night
and reaching out to you.

You with those warm hands.
You with that wet mouth.”

– Trista Mateer

Every Day You Play {Poetry}

Tuesday, February 17, 2015 Good Things, Photography, Poetry, Poetry Tuesday, Uncategorized Neruda, Poetry, Spring Permalink

Every Day You Play

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Pablo Neruda

It’s no secret that I love Pablo Neruda’s poetry. The official start of spring is still over a month away and it certainly doesn’t feel very spring-like around here. However, my mind has been on spring. I’m trying to think warm. So far, it hasn’t worked, but I’ll keep trying. 🙂

That last line of the poem gets me every time. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. I have always read that line as the most extraordinary metaphor for sensuality, awakening, and the magic of transformation. It is always very dark and gray outside in the months preceding the cherry blossoms. When they finally arrive — as they do, unfailingly each year — I feel reborn, fresh, invigorated. The world is once again full of hope, magic, and promise again after a long, cold, damp, dark season.

Take It All Back {Poetry}

Tuesday, January 6, 2015 Poetry, Poetry Tuesday Neruda, Poetry Permalink

Take it all back.
Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs.
A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty.
The way bodies fit together.
Fresh and young and sweet.
Coffee in the morning.
These are just moments.
I struggle with the in-betweens.
I just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do,
because what else is there to do?

-Pablo Neruda

A History of Flesh {Poetry}

Tuesday, October 7, 2014 Love, Poetry Tuesday Poetry Permalink

is there a name for
the loss of a memory
the forgetfulness of the body
the cruelty of soft skin
turned sharp
and hard?
is there a name for
the last time somebody held
your love in their mouth
like a mother cat
holding a newborn kitten
or like a porcelain bowl
carefully cradling fruit?

what about the sensation of waking up
next to the person
you love most in the world
the warmth of their body
travelling from their side of the bed
to yours
is there a name for that?

i could not name it all
i could not write a dictionary to match
the sensations of life
of broken bones and bruised knees
of chipped fingernails
and scraped elbows
of love made and love lost
of fireplace heat and winter cold
it would take me lifetimes
to chronicle all of this
and so i put these brief
moments into paragraphs
and sentences.

and sometimes at night
when i can not sleep
when my body is still buzzing
with all the things i can not name
i pinch my eyes shut tight
and try to conjure up the last time
somebody told me;
“your body is a story
i would never get tired
of telling.”
-Esperanza Friel

Phantom Hand {Poetry}

Tuesday, September 23, 2014 Poetry Tuesday Poetry Permalink

Do you remember the first
lightning bug
you accidentally killed?
How you squeezed it too hard
in your fist because
you wanted to keep it long enough
to show us?
No one knows what you did with
the light, or where your hand
has been since it happened,
but they’re all curious.

When did it get bad?
When did your voice turn into an
answering machine?
There’s a man at the door who wants
to save your soul. Says he’s been
looking for you,
that God sent him a message telling
him you needed his forgiveness.
The act. The circus of it all.
I’ll tell him to come back later.

Do you remember when you cracked
open by accident,
spilled your firefly sun all over my floor
like it was wine?
I do. I saw it. Proof that you
were still here,
glowing somewhere that you
forgot you could reach.

Tell me about everything you buried
and how it came climbing out of
you with a vengeance. Tell me about
beauty and the beast, the hand and
the fist,
how you remembered you could be
both the thing that opens and the
thing that closes.
Come to me.
Forgive yourself for the things
that turned you into a ghost.
Let me watch you love yourself
solid again.

God, how I love this. It’s so poignantly beautiful. My favorite lines:

Tell me about
beauty and the beast, the hand and
the fist,
how you remembered you could be
both the thing that opens and the
thing that closes.

Yes, yes. We can all be both the thing that opens and the thing that closes.

The Infinite One {Poetry}

Tuesday, September 16, 2014 Poetry Tuesday Neruda, Poetry Permalink

Do you see these hands?
They have measured
the earth, they have separated
minerals and cereals,
they have made peace and war,
they have demolished the distances
of all the seas and rivers,
and yet,
when they move over you,
little one,
grain of wheat, swallow,
they can not encompass you,
they are weary seeking
the twin doves
that rest or fly in your breast,
they travel the distances of your legs,
they coil in the light of your waist.
For me you are a treasure more laden
with immensity than the sea and its branches
and you are white and blue and spacious like
the earth at vintage time.
In that territory,
from your feet to your brow,
walking, walking, walking,
I shall spend my life.

Bella {Poetry}

Tuesday, September 9, 2014 Poetry Tuesday Neruda, Poetry Permalink

Lovely one,
just as on the cool stone
of the spring, the water
opens a wide flash of foam,
so is the smile of your face,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
with delicate hands and slender feet
like a silver pony,
walking, flower of the world,
thus I see you,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
with a nest of copper entangled
on your head, a nest
the color of dark honey
where my heart burns and rests,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
your eyes are too big for your face,
your eyes are too big for the earth.

There are countries, there are rivers,
in your eyes,
my country is your eyes,
I walk through them,
they light the world
through which I walk,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
your breasts are like two loaves made
of grainy earth and golden moon,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
your waist,
my arm shaped it like a river when
it flowed a thousand years through your sweet body,
lovely one.

Lovely one,
there is nothing like your hips,
perhaps earth has
in some hidden place
the curve and the fragrance of your body,
perhaps in some place,
lovely one.

Lovely one, my lovely one,
your voice, your skin, your nails,
lovely one, my lovely one,
your being, your light, your shadow,
lovely one,
all that is mine, lovely one,
all that is mine, my dear,
when you walk or rest,
when you sing or sleep,
when you suffer or dream,
always,
when you are near or far,
always,
you are mine, my lovely one,
always.
-Neruda

Language is such a fascinating thing. Even in the same language, there can be such great variations in the meaning of a word. I watch quite a few BBC programs, because most American TV is mindless drivel. My latest find is Last Tango in Halifax. Whenever I watch a show from the UK I have to turn on the closed captioning so I can understand what is bring said. The English have an accent that I just can’t understand. Ironic, isn’t it? I’m frequently pausing the program so I can look up the British meaning of an English word. For example, pissed in Britain means drunk, not mad. And I hope that no one ever calls me a slapper, because it means something totally different there.

“Translating poetry is like making jewelry. Every word counts, and each sparkles with so many facets. Translating prose is like sculpting: get the shape and the lines right, then polish the seams later.” – James Nolan

Ode to a Naked Beauty {Poetry}

Tuesday, September 2, 2014 Poetry Tuesday, Uncategorized Beauty, Neruda, Poetry Permalink

Ode to a Naked Beauty

With chaste heart, and pure
eyes
I celebrate you, my beauty,
restraining my blood
so that the line
surges and follows
your contour,
and you bed yourself in my verse,
as in woodland, or wave-spume:
earth’s perfume,
sea’s music.

Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America’s oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.

The line of your back
separating you
falls away into paler regions
then surges
to the smooth hemispheres
of an apple,
and goes splitting
your loveliness
into two pillars
of burnt gold, pure alabaster,
to be lost in the twin clusters of your feet,
from which, once more, lifts and takes fire
the double tree of your symmetry:
flower of fire, open circle of candles,
swollen fruit raised
over the meeting of earth and ocean.

Your body – from what substances
agate, quartz, ears of wheat,
did it flow, was it gathered,
rising like bread
in the warmth,
and signalling hills
silvered,
valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses
of velvet depth,
until the pure, fine, form of woman
thickened
and rested there?

It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive.

-Pablo Neruda

This is a lesser known poem of Neruda’s, but I absolutely love it. I don’t think that it’s commonly translated into English and I don’t think that it’s always a very accurate translation. For example, in the original version the line that reads “your eyelids of silken corn” actually says ” tus párpados de trigo”. Trigo is wheat, not corn. Nonetheless, it moves me. My brain is filled with such glorious visual imagery when I read these words. It’s sexy, yet subtly so. Sometimes that is the best way.