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by Marek Lugowski
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26feb00 poem for wifefriend
5mar00 smell like a girl
15mar00 touch pad, sa marek (enteractc om)
29mar00 a soft a hard a soft hard sway, nothing fey about it
1jun00 paternoster
7jul00 hands in waiting
1aug00 on this planet all things faraway shimmer blue
27aug00 black
23sep00 tide-girl
2oct00 the grief of an elephant
19jan01 when deed again
20mar00 Cleis (Sappho)
poem for wifefriend
-----------------------------------------------------------
dear mitten i did my homework.
looked through the panes of other people's marriages
saw everyday saw radiance
we fixed our expectations took aim...
cool talk unfolds lonely leanings
miss you miss you kiss you -- we stroke each other
architecturally
a kiss you miss you glass design clearing a way of seeing
kid names already picked out -- they are exotic and lovely
still kids will poo -- I just hope not in that too
puky pink or puky baby blue
infant fluff does not have to revolt
aren't we doing this for a good reason?
astonishing how little there is to say
for the load to be taken off our shoulders
not a lot got exchanged -- rather -- lots revealed
thank you o swifts of instant recognition
i presume pornography will stand down
to decommission then recycle
or is this another utopia?
i am excercising again
always marveled at madonnas with wide-eyed brats in arms
at bus stops at the cashier's
how can they
i'd be worn out
little piglet who's yer daddy?
can't shake the inevitability of it all
we are two time capsules with stuff inside them
nudged into a rattle of a bottle
mouthing the label:
"don't you just long for that tiny hand to clutch
your little finger?"
the woman whose feet are resting on a turtle which
itself rests on an elephant which works hard and rests
off and on
is now laboring at taking two
she just shook out two --
the two glisten in the palm of her open hand
uncombined
still slightly apart
but destined to be taken together
two at bedtime
for the rest of her life
here we come
my sweat pea lean-to medicine
here we come
Marek Lugowski
26 February 2000
Chicago, Illinois
smell like a girl
----------------------------------------------------------
took a whiff inside the bright green plastic
bubble sheet in which my medicine comes
hospital sunlight on a pretty pretty pretty nurse's hair!
dust dancing in a beam of light. smell like a girl.
a skein of white opaques: messages in a bottle
each carefully dispatched by sam.
before sam -- odu. before odu -- sk.
i take my medicine with tea
i hope to take tea with my medicine
pi lo chun. golden gleam.
white winter light has yellowed
pond water ripples ripens to afternoon blue
wind hairplays with it
for me you will always bring more -- pledges the water
for me you will always bring more -- pledges the wind
smell like a boy smell like a girl
Marek Lugowski
5 March 2000
Chicago, Illinois
touch pad, sa marek (enteractc om)
------------------------------------------------------
i played with your face
the mac whirly whirled
the software installed
it was the seventh basic
real player
it took forever
ample time
i traced you
r left cheek down to your chin
dangled an earing by your right then left ear
(you looked muy feliz)
i touched you right on
the nose
delicately follo
wed up the curve of your brow
the whirly checkered roun
ded then upped around the other
feather-touched the touchpad --
sweetspot of the sugarloaf
went down the right side
of your neck
and rested
in the artery nook
right by the warm croo
k and the whirly whirled and whirled and whirled
then returned to arrow
you know, chica linda linda linda
it's been a dry and snowless winter
like when --
when will you rain?
Marek Lugowski
15 March 2000
Chicago, Illinois
a soft a hard a soft hard sway, nothing fey about it
--------------------------------------------------------
inside a cantaloupe -- blonde
smells clean tastes good
i like the flesh moist and firm
a watery rose-yellowy sheen
my hard spoon slides in -- with time
unearths the translucent green
a diving loon -- my spoon and i
talk out loud -- for love mostly
with my mouth full of melon fruit
full of your sweet name o mitten
i am sold on the rough elephant skin
cupped roundly in my left hand
this could be your heels taken together
"It's not an option. we are having children."
"yeah, you get the fun parts!
they won't be sucking you dry. *smile*
you'll have your kids
and you won't think i'm pretty anymore
because the kids took it all away,
leaving me with pouches of skin! :)"
i so wish i had you here at my lakeside already
to feed mouthfuls to on our vast blonde couch
looking out west
a couch with professional movers-lopped-off rear casters
all the better to kiss you fondle you entwine you
the couch itself will enfold you
resist giving you up -- all the furniture here
welcomes you home
so -- will you put your crinkly feet up on arrival
vege out fully
i will feed you
i will play for you some quirky dreamy piano
i will kiss your hair -- never tire of touching it
you will spin the saddest smiths songs
and you will sing the promised lullabies
no breeze will sway the silent almonds of candles
less light more fondle more light more fondle
bluish morning city light will dawn
we will slink off to bed to sleep in snuggly consort
and if you do not wish to eat blonde melons
i will be sad but i won't cry
i will eat them myself
i will fish for you in the sea of sweet
not to sway you -- swaying is a a natural occurrence
in windy city hi-rise living
hey. hey you. iloveyou.
Marek Lugowski
29 March 2000
Chicago, Illinois
just saying no to paternalism (includes a paternoster)
--------------------------------------------------------
someone told me someone told me
someone
that i come over
pater
nalistic
but that this is
probably nothing
i can help
i was stung to the quick
yes. to the quick. to the
quick.
dear fire that burns (never forget to burn)
this is a prayer (paternoster):
i will come over
only.
i will come over
only.
i will come over
only.
only come over.
Marek Lugowski
1 June 2000
Chicago, Illinois
hands in waiting
--------------------------------------------------------
1.
these hands were made for loving
and that's just what they'll do
and one of these days these hands are gonna
skate all over you.
2.
sitting in the sauna -- beading up
i examine critically my swimming-bleached
cuticles my boyish knuckles
my strong closely-trimmed finger
nails -- the pink and cream stuff
a rio friend -- she'd said:
doctor's.
but these are not doctor's hands
not even master's
they are just my kind of town hands
the it is still early hands
meet me at the fountain drop me in the water
you could pin me like a butterfly hands
clean hands
keyboard upon keyboard pentatonic windy city hands
hands that instantly bruise and blister
in 20 minutes of kayaking into the wind
yes of course they harden then yes they do
hands which will dry out in torrents of dishwashing
hands that yes have amply gone to love before
and yes could be called up again
like willing and able yankee minutemen
to caress -- for your and our freedom -- for hours.
but not until they see the whites of your eyes
yes the hands that say: just say...
i am sitting in the sauna pearling up and smiling
at the thought: here is a (little) light (yellow)
that often goes out
in the middim sauna light hand-to-mouth existence
conjures itself unusually calmly -- i am not hardened
by these visions of man~ana
i shake the thought
i turn my hands upside down
think photographically
think tactically
how would these hands stroke your spine
or brush your hair behind your ears (both at once)
or as helen writes -- touch (delicately) at the pink claw
oh helen.
it is hot and now i am raining
spot spot drip drip drop
my nose -- an icicle -- my ears -- a bicycle
traversing in slush -- in sluicing weather
yes i am melting
staining the already dark floor grating
and glistening
my hands are your hands
in waiting
the rush and the push -- i opened the door --
yes -- yes even the air has such soft hands
in waiting
so anxious to love me -- oh my love
the hands of blue cool
Marek Lugowski
7 July 2000
Chicago, Illinois
on this planet all things faraway shimmer blue
--------------------------------------------------------
yes i run fantasies on time all the time
ghosts of trains on a track
overgrown with grass blade-gifting weeds
still -- fit for picking seven kinds of wildflowers
so. in this particular dream (a 5:28 local to my bed)
i unlock the door to my homestead -- our homestead --
i walk in
there you are on the couch
sitting braced expecting having traveled -- and you say
they let me in
i am certain that all my life
with all the other people -- women mother father sister
i have rehearsed this laying grief to rest:
i will brush your brow
i will cup your face
you will brush my brow
you will cup my face
survival is the point of embrace
anything more would kill us.
we are the ghost steam-engines of the good old days
not yet gone by. drink, my older sister. you are without
a little brother -- in polish you would say: bez bratka.
i am your sharp blue vase
you are my round blue pitcher
and the seven kinds of wildflowers will keep
if we press them among the leaves of the book
where heros sing charms and things actually get done
that way yes. have you noticed love?
we have been singing.
Marek Lugowski
1 August 2000
Chicago, Illinois
[rev 2 August]
black
---------------------------------------------------------
standing leaning -- wood -- the kitchen door
eating the last blackberries of the summer
thinking -- there's plenty more here and.
and? and. the summer is nearly empty and
neither one of us smokes so let the black
ash fallout of rinsed blackberries
be our ceremonial toke.
standing leaning -- wood -- the kitchen door
poststructurally smoking a bowl of the last
blackberries of the summer... now you too can
my dear my white mitten my fear my blue duck
my muted blackbody.
playing a black baby
grand steinway and sons
school of ed meeting room -- tall glassy
sleepy carpethall unlocked afterhours
afterovernight hours
eight-in-the-morning
suddenly the sun shone and played
my hands!
it welcomed me -- such unexpected inclusion
i welcomed it -- choosing the best
word accompanying
my name
how the word fell slick and heavy
flicking pretty pretty pretty -- into the black
keys
into my indian
raga
into my indian
dances
into my jazzy
stomp.
outside -- campus empty
east of the sun -- faraway haze
west of the moon -- glitter silvered the water
and the three fountains in our lagoon swooshed:
hi. we too are daughters.
a headbanded ponytailed blond woman jogging
a crisp-white hat-wearing latino man hosing down
the conference center delivery dock as i brought in
our corrugated packing across the empty parking lot
good morning!
returning surveying the trinkling greenery
kind and mellow lemon air
effervescences of work done
recognition of i-am-alive
i asked. am i happy or am i unhappy? i asked
more than once. and? and. and later i found myself
standing leaning -- wood -- the kitchen door
one of two. smoking ceremonially a bowl of
the last blackberries of the summer.
Marek Lugowski
27-28 August 2000
Chicago, Illinois
tide-girl
---------------------------------------------------
tide-girl, tide-girl you so brite
gel or no, you're lovely, quite
you are the bee's knees, you rule
do you have a vacancy -- for a fool?
Marek Lugowski
23 September 2000
Chicago, Illinois
the grief of an elephant
--------------------------------------------------------
her trunk probes -- fondles moves fondles and again
she probes the skull the ridges
she kisses the teeth and again
and again
this is going on for hours in the namibia sun
soft-probes -- fondles -- fondles -- the motion repeats
the calf dropped some months ago, anthrax
the herd returns, water
attention piagetian cognitive psychology:
these pathmakers are mapmakers
these mapmakers make new paths
at dusk infrasound formerly unheard by man
is listened to for up to six miles
bouncing off the warm air, temperature inversion
elephant talk elephant talk
an elephant is a submarine -- pinging and lis(t)e
ning
her soft trunk probes fondles fondles, again and again
how are you putting in words that what you are saying,
elephant mother?
no need to ask about kissing the ridges kissing the teeth
touching the mouth (the usual greeting when two meet)
what are you saying of and to
your dead baby daughter.
Marek Lugowski
2 October 2000
Chicago, Illinois
when deed again
-------------------------------------------------
you know like -- when you look in the eye
people with a very blue very see-through
very glass-like
very patterned -- fair -- glass bead of an eye
with spokes radiating!
and something gets caught under your breath?
a threat?
of being down-undered, ancestor pain maybe
for the kids that never came and went maybe
you know like when i look instead on a darkbrown eye
into a jew or a druze or a red sea-coastal yemeni
or una latina or la mujer espan~ola -- and it's that
calming loving nursing kiss-me-in-the-face and.
and and! and make me instantly
tranquil just by looking?
you know the looking? that is the looking i need.
the only time i -- the only only only time i
think about jewishness and -- genericness --
what a mess that eye specialness.
do you suppose we have fear in a little cooking flame
a pilot light not too bright
about as bright as a spasm of a calf?
your erudite russian face at halfmoon of a streetlight
your warm homey honey delicate _blask_
in the amber dusk of sodium
i won't describe. that curve. that look.
that whet of wet.
yes i could be married
to a grayblue eye -- my father's apple people.
so, darling, yell
to put my hands up on my head, entwine them
march out like a woman -- out of the rune country
or a tarot deck of cards
or a coffee-toffee live one
smelling of egypt, of india
a water cistern on her head
and proclaim me walking dead for you, sister --
ojczyzna -- duch -- blask.
fatherland -- spirit -- shine.
Marek Lugowski
19 January 2001
Chicago, Illinois
One companion poem, not mine, but posted to rap with
this dedication, so I suppose, it is an affiliated poem:
for my wifefriend
Cleis
--------------------------------------------------------
Sleep, darling
I have a small
daughter called
Cleis, who is
like a golden
flower
I wouldn't
take all Croesus'
kingdom with love
thrown in, for her
---
Don't ask me what to wear
I have no embroidered
headband from Sardis to
give you, Cleis, such as
I wore
and my mother
always said that in her
day a purple ribbon
looped in the hair was thought
to be high style indeed
but we were dark:
a girl
whose hair is yellower than
torchlight should wear no
headdress but fresh flowers
Sappho
2600 or so years ago, island of Lesbos, Greece
translated from the Aeolic Ancient Greek
by Mary Barnard
_Sappho_, University of California Press, 1984,
ISBN 0520011171 (my recommendation)
Sappho link
...bio + to see how various translators convey her poetry
Cleis = her only child, daughter