Submissions by Baldwin
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
My heart
My heart
is muttering
dark things.
My heart is weight,
shark bone,
so clumsy now,
and whittled down,
so hollow,
slight,
un-homed.
Oh for the lifting sight
of you.
is muttering
dark things.
My heart is weight,
shark bone,
so clumsy now,
and whittled down,
so hollow,
slight,
un-homed.
Oh for the lifting sight
of you.
#passion
238 reads
21 Comments
Manna from heaven
If sex, like bread, is food
that nourishes one's life,
I pray to God to have
my appetite for it
increased.
And if this be His will,
I’ll give great praise unto Ha-Shem,
who in his making humankind
embodied, sensual beings,
recognized (as many Rabbi’s said)
that carnal pleasurings
were gifts divinely posed to be enjoyed
and not despised
or compromised,**
before I set His way
this variation of the prayer
that old Augustine pled:
“Please grant me chastity
and continence,
my sovereign Lord,*** ...
that nourishes one's life,
I pray to God to have
my appetite for it
increased.
And if this be His will,
I’ll give great praise unto Ha-Shem,
who in his making humankind
embodied, sensual beings,
recognized (as many Rabbi’s said)
that carnal pleasurings
were gifts divinely posed to be enjoyed
and not despised
or compromised,**
before I set His way
this variation of the prayer
that old Augustine pled:
“Please grant me chastity
and continence,
my sovereign Lord,*** ...
#sex
255 reads
0 Comments
If I should craft some lullabies for you
If I should craft some lullabies for you,
there’d be one marked to rhythm out
the tender sways I’d dance in you
when you I’d safely cradled in my arms
in rocking chair or bed.
Another one to warm away the biting cold
that frosted gusts from off
the bay have shivered into you
as I am drawing you within a favorite blanket’s fold
And one that I would say
when I have lit against midwinter’s
deepening night some candles flames
and set the tapers at the water's edge of a teeming tub
that for you I’ve...
there’d be one marked to rhythm out
the tender sways I’d dance in you
when you I’d safely cradled in my arms
in rocking chair or bed.
Another one to warm away the biting cold
that frosted gusts from off
the bay have shivered into you
as I am drawing you within a favorite blanket’s fold
And one that I would say
when I have lit against midwinter’s
deepening night some candles flames
and set the tapers at the water's edge of a teeming tub
that for you I’ve...
#love
336 reads
23 Comments
Should We Love What the Braggart Writes
If you wish for me
to spend my time in reading
any of the compositions you insist
are poetry
to see if they are "love worthy"
I need to know,
and certainly be shown,
that in the way they're shaped
and worded by your hand,
they're filled with rapturous imagery
and such linguistic grace
and charm
that’s truly powerful enough
to take my breath away
and when my breath’s regained
to make me nod agreeably
and primed enthusiastically to say
“oh this is something...
to spend my time in reading
any of the compositions you insist
are poetry
to see if they are "love worthy"
I need to know,
and certainly be shown,
that in the way they're shaped
and worded by your hand,
they're filled with rapturous imagery
and such linguistic grace
and charm
that’s truly powerful enough
to take my breath away
and when my breath’s regained
to make me nod agreeably
and primed enthusiastically to say
“oh this is something...
#WritingPoetry
199 reads
13 Comments
Will I sigh?
How will our kiss begin?
And when it does
will I then sigh,
so tempted, swayed to sin,
if it is honey-tinged?
And will I feel myself
if it goes on,
within a leisured lingering,
a man whose will's undone
and wholly won to you
when it (so sadly) ends?
And when it does
will I then sigh,
so tempted, swayed to sin,
if it is honey-tinged?
And will I feel myself
if it goes on,
within a leisured lingering,
a man whose will's undone
and wholly won to you
when it (so sadly) ends?
#sensual
308 reads
4 Comments
Through a Glass Brightly
I think my window’s full
of dazzling charm
because it lets me see
across the way from it
my lover’s face
within her bedroom’s own;
a face I’d gladly gaze upon
from now until eternity
if only God would let this be.
So bless this framework and its glass
that shows and brings
her gracing countenance to me.
And may she pray the same
about her casement’s bowering
when she, though it, at certain times
in looking at my house
spies mine.
of dazzling charm
because it lets me see
across the way from it
my lover’s face
within her bedroom’s own;
a face I’d gladly gaze upon
from now until eternity
if only God would let this be.
So bless this framework and its glass
that shows and brings
her gracing countenance to me.
And may she pray the same
about her casement’s bowering
when she, though it, at certain times
in looking at my house
spies mine.
#love
306 reads
5 Comments
Autumn Emptiness
Within this season full of low and snaking smoke,
this quartered age of fire and churning light,
Demeter’s bane,
this time of yellow mellowing of every willow bough
and aching shadow on the bracken and the sere,
this liming time for hedgerows
and the apple tree,
Oh let her come to me
again.
My hearth, my heart is cold.
this quartered age of fire and churning light,
Demeter’s bane,
this time of yellow mellowing of every willow bough
and aching shadow on the bracken and the sere,
this liming time for hedgerows
and the apple tree,
Oh let her come to me
again.
My hearth, my heart is cold.
#UnrequitedLove
186 reads
0 Comments
His Cold Fish (for J-Z who won't answer the question of whether he's been desired by women)
I wonder if you’ve ever known
a woman seething with desire for you;
a woman who, when seeing your approach
to her
has found you irresistible and rapturous
and then became one sparked to sing
a heated siren’s call for you to come
into her arms
to know her lips
to joy her on her bed
in great and (to her senses) justified
anticipation of your making good
a promised, indisputable intent
to give to her and all her eager flesh
again and then again
a sumptuous pleasuring.
Or is it true
that if...
a woman seething with desire for you;
a woman who, when seeing your approach
to her
has found you irresistible and rapturous
and then became one sparked to sing
a heated siren’s call for you to come
into her arms
to know her lips
to joy her on her bed
in great and (to her senses) justified
anticipation of your making good
a promised, indisputable intent
to give to her and all her eager flesh
again and then again
a sumptuous pleasuring.
Or is it true
that if...
#lust
296 reads
1 Comment
Jesus Cannot Take my Loneliness Away
You say that Jesus can assuage
your loneliness.
But that is something he can’t do
since he’s become a ghost
and since the only certain cure
for this condition lies
in having someone who, empirically
has earthly physicality,
a real, undoubted, human presence in the world,
reach out in space and time
to touch your skin
and hold you in warm arms
of flesh
then sit with you in silence for a while
and speak out loudly afterward
of friendship
and of love
in words ...
your loneliness.
But that is something he can’t do
since he’s become a ghost
and since the only certain cure
for this condition lies
in having someone who, empirically
has earthly physicality,
a real, undoubted, human presence in the world,
reach out in space and time
to touch your skin
and hold you in warm arms
of flesh
then sit with you in silence for a while
and speak out loudly afterward
of friendship
and of love
in words ...
#loneliness
#emptiness
208 reads
3 Comments
Laura
I remember how
I saw you through the glass
of my back door
the day you came to stay with me;
you, outside, knocking,
standing timid, yes,
but eager for me, too --
eager then
and shining-eyed.
And I remember how
within my welcoming you in,
you then became
a golden shimmering,
ready for a slow slow kiss;
and this – this too:
you
whispering “Hello,
how are you now?”,
your red red mouth
an embering against my ear,
and oh ...
I saw you through the glass
of my back door
the day you came to stay with me;
you, outside, knocking,
standing timid, yes,
but eager for me, too --
eager then
and shining-eyed.
And I remember how
within my welcoming you in,
you then became
a golden shimmering,
ready for a slow slow kiss;
and this – this too:
you
whispering “Hello,
how are you now?”,
your red red mouth
an embering against my ear,
and oh ...
#lust
217 reads
7 Comments
Indecency
It has been claimed
that “decent” people do not kiss
when they are walking down the street
or show affection publicly.
For then, it’s also claimed,
they feel there’s something that
they will not well possess
if they did this.
But what this “something” is
this claimant left us all to guess.
For he, so deixis bound,
has been remiss (again)
in saying what these “decent” ones
wish not a deprivation of
some unknown thing
to be their fate.
In any case, I think
that if this...
that “decent” people do not kiss
when they are walking down the street
or show affection publicly.
For then, it’s also claimed,
they feel there’s something that
they will not well possess
if they did this.
But what this “something” is
this claimant left us all to guess.
For he, so deixis bound,
has been remiss (again)
in saying what these “decent” ones
wish not a deprivation of
some unknown thing
to be their fate.
In any case, I think
that if this...
#love
229 reads
0 Comments
How I Wish It Were So
She’s thinking how my touch
might be like snow
upon her wrists
her neck,
her lips,
a feathering;
how it would halt her breath
and make her inarticulate
and open-mouthed
and seeking mine.
She knows that she’ll become
a heated liquid thing,
and serpentine
at last, at last
upon the length of me.
might be like snow
upon her wrists
her neck,
her lips,
a feathering;
how it would halt her breath
and make her inarticulate
and open-mouthed
and seeking mine.
She knows that she’ll become
a heated liquid thing,
and serpentine
at last, at last
upon the length of me.
#sensual
300 reads
7 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Baldwin