Nostalgia Poems (1,152)

I am the Sphinx.
I am the woman buried in the sand
up to her chin.
I am waiting for an archaeologist
to unearth me,
to dig out my neck & my nipples,
bare my claws
& solve my riddle.

No one has solved my riddle
since Oedipus.

I face the pyramids which rise
like angular breasts
from the dry body of Egypt.
My fertile river is flowing down below-
a lovely lower kingdom.
Every woman should have a delta
with such rich silt-
brown as the buttocks
of Nubian queens.

O friend, why have you come to Egypt?
Aton & Yaweh
are still feuding.
Moses is leading his people
& speaking quilt.
The voice out of the volcano
will not be still.

A religion of death,
a woman buried alive.
For thousands of years
the sand drifted over my head.
My sex was a desert,
my hair more porous than pumice,
& nobody sucked my lips
to make me tell.

The pyramid breasts, though huge,
will never sag.
In the center of each one,
a darkened chamber....
a tunnel,
dead man's bones,
malignant gold.


~SAS~

Bright blue eyes he had
that I can't deny.
Wish he had been mine.

But little he cared 'bout me
he was teasing me, you see?

Shouldn't have trusted his
captivating personality.

How old must I be to not miss
The company and embrace of She
Faithful to the end I never strayed
But not for the want of dreaming.

Doing a woman’s work as I live alone
I learn of the sacrifices made
The drudgery willingly endured
Nare a thought of getting a maid

I made her last days comfortable at home,
And when she was gone I did not weep
Perhaps consoled in her freedom
Forever missed
How long to not feel the loss?

The poplars' lengthening on this hill,
amid the rows of marigolds and earth,
and through the box hedge labyrinth we walk,
together, to the choiring twilight bells.
~
Their fugue of echoes echoes through the hills
and sings against this time-streaked, flowering wall
where breezes coax the potted lemon trees,
the pendant, yellow fruit and shiny leaves.
Beneath the flaming watercolor sky,
the cultivated, terraced drop of hill,
a gleaming city with its towers and domes,
the Arno shimmering as it drowns the sun,
and a Poet cries.
~
Chameleon-like, I am transformed by the light
of his love and wine has blurred the edges of the
night.

What gifts I could ever give him on this night
or any other night may be retracted in another
light.

You understand this in a foreign tongue,
but vaguely, for these things will not translate.
I feel it in the cadence of your walk;
I am not one for whom moonlight can create,
you are.

And you will think the loosening of these thighs,
the sudden, urging whiteness of the throat
are muted but distantly a Poet cries.
and in your triumph you will fairly gloat.
~
Tonight the unplucked lemons almost gleam.
And with their legs, the crickets harmonize,
The trees are rustling an uncertain hymn,
and unseen birds contribute their trembling sighs,
And a Poet cries


~SAS~

Put away my basket and sewing thread

Whilst memories of how you use to be

Decidedly were better left unsaid

Each repair sewed lovingly yet still see

The scars that have changed how you once appeared

There's nothing more that I can do for you

I will don you for what you are, no more tears

There's nothing left for me to really do

Memories of colors that showed so bright

Faded replaced by a different hue

I could think of what once was or what might

Or just except you for what you've been thru

Sometimes life has a way of changing course

To move on you must let go of remorse

entering life's core
center crust
of existence
tore from limb
to limb
serving in peace
inside the heartache

opening crypts
within the mind
speaks in
its own world
is this life
we live
worth living

naked outside
our being
such bitterness
could turn
the beauty
of joy
into sadness

a battlefield within
oneself could turn
love into hate
pain and suffering follows
overturning happiness leaving
the dreaded darkness
of oncoming doom
words spoken meaningless
full of
empty promises

a forever dream
destroying future plans
one foolish game played
judging one completely
without good reason
down trodden
without mercy
fighting in
the light

your shame
is haunting
turning a sanctuary
into a dark prison
emotions greater
than oneself
found the answers
behind unforgiving
truth in reality
i let you go
with love

TAKE this kiss upon the blow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.


I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden stand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?



Did you meet with Freddy in my dreams?
I will not hurt you
Because you have not seen my eyes still...

"The spirit moves, but not always upward." ~Roethke<BR>

Poet,
Life is a process.
It is best
not
to stand
in its way.

What happens … happens
What is … is

Dance
with existence
like you would dance
with a lover.

Find an image
that will keep you safe, and away from the madness.

I find
the image of you
standing before me
your ocean blue
eyes locked
in a gaze
with mine,

The room-
service dishes
are scattered
around the hotel room,
and we're
making ready
to touch
each others body.

(do you remember
these times, poet?
are they as special
to you? I think of them
often)

these images
save me from this
mad, mad world, poet.

Reach within yourself
and discover
your own set of truths,
your own set of values
and ideals …

your own set of beliefs
on the movements
and the philosophies
of existence

Today teaches
how to live
tomorrow

Awaken the dance
that decides
your fate.

Awaken the wisdom
within you

Find the peace
in the silence
around you

Don't be
like those
who try to fight
their way through
that silence …

Don't be like those
who fear
that silence … and run.

There is wisdom
in that silence.

There is dance
in that silence.

There are philosophies,
and poems,
and ideas
in that silence.

And there is a strange romance
that swirls so close …

Can you feel it,
between you and the poems …
between you and the philosophies …
between you and the ideas that exist in your mind …

Dance with existence.

Hold it
like you would hold
something s*xual
in the night …
something erotic …
something forbidden …
something taboo

We have
no friends
We have
no enemies.
We have
only
teachers

Find wisdom
in whatever form it appears.

Pay attention
and understand
from the start
that there'll be
no understanding …

Understand
from the start
that spirituality
is not something separate
from your life.

It walks
hand in hand
down the path
with you.

Every moment
has two separate realities … one physical / one spiritual

Many choose to ignore the spiritual …
but ignoring the spiritual
doesn't make
the spiritual
unreal,
or distant,
or mystical

Ignoring
the spiritual
makes one shallow
and one-dimensional …

(Blows
against
existence …
blows
against
the night …
blows
against the philosophies
of night … and the dances we do
together.)

find the center
of every moment

find
the perfect circle
within
each moment

find
the perfect thought,
the perfect image,
the perfect beginning …

and then
begin.

I should close.

I'm sorry for these strange, twisting words.

The coffee shop
at the edge of the universe
is very philosophical this morning.

I'm lost
within its fog …
within its cloudy, rainy atmosphere …
within the grayness
of the painting
we all
become a part of
when we enter the coffee shop
at the edge of the universe …

I will write again soon.
SAS

Mom,

I have cursed you enough in the lines of my poems and between them, in the silences which fall like ash flakes on the water tank from a smog bound sky.

I have cursed you because I remember the smell of Palmolive on a sealskin coat and because I feel more abandoned than a baby seal on an iceberg covered in its mother's blood.

I have cursed you as I walked and prayed on a concrete terrace high above the street because whatever I pulled down with my bruised hand from the bruised sky, whatever lovely plum came to my mouth you envied and spat out.

Because you saw me in your image, because I favored you, you punished me. It was only a form of you my poems were seeking. Neither of us knew. For years we lived together in a single skin.

We shared coats.
We hated each other as the soul hates the body for being weak,
as the mind hates the stomach for needing food,
as one lover hates the other.

I kicked in the pouches of your theories like a baby kangaroo.
I believed you on Tolstoy & Darwin.
I said I loved Pushkin (you loved him).

I vowed Monet was better than Bosch. Who cared?
I would have said nonsense to please you and frequently did.
This took the form of course, of fighting you.
We fought so beautifully.
We fought like one boxer and his punching bag.
We fought like mismatched twins.
We fought like the secret sharer and his shade.

Now, we're apart. Time doesn't heal all wounds. Separateness is real and keeps growing. One by one the mothers drop away, the lovers leave, the babies outgrow clothes. Some get insomnia- the poet's disease and sit up nights nursing at the nipples of their pens.

I have made hot milk and kissed you where you are.
I have cursed my curses.
I have cleared the air. Now I sit here writing, breathing you.

XOX,
your daughter


~SAS~

Coffee Shop At the Edge of the Universe

Here, at the coffee shop at
the edge of the universe,
the flowers bleed
as if they were hearts,
the hearts ooze a darkness
like India ink,
and poets dip their pens in
and they write.
~
"Here at the coffee shop at
the edge of the universe,"
they write,
not knowing what it means.
~
"Here, where the sky nurses on black milk,
where the smokestacks feed the sky,
where the trees tremble in terror
and people come to resemble them..."
~
Here, at the coffee shop at
the edge of the universe,
the poets, the poets are bleeding.

Writing and bleeding
are thought to be the same;
singing and bleeding
are thought to be the same.
~
Write us a poem!
Send us a parcel of metaphors!
Comfort us with proverbs or candied fruit,
with talk of one God.
~
Distract us with theories of art
no one can prove.
~
Here at the coffee shop at
the edge of the universe
our heads are empty,
and the wind walks through them
like ghosts
through a haunted house.


~SAS