poems-for-my-lady

[poems-for-my-lady]

"Wild Geese"

LUDWING KNAUS "Der Morgan Nach Der Feier" (1853)

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting– over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Poem of:

Mary Oliver (American poet (1935/2019) was an out lesbian. She moved to Princetown with her lifelong partner, Molly Malone Cook. They met when Oliver was young, and essentially, they lived happily ever after. When Cook passed, Mary Oliver wrote Our World, a beautiful book dedicated to Cook and their love.

[poems-for-my-lady]

"For Willyce"

Hans Makart "Myskalusche unterhaltung" - (1874)

When i make love to you

i try

with each stroke of my tongue

to say

i love you

to tease

i love you

to hammer

i love you

to melt

i love you

and your sounds drift down

oh god!

oh jesus!

and i think

here it is, some dude’s

getting credit for what

a woman

has done,

again.

Poem of Pat Parker (1970)

Pat Parker (1944-1989) - Black Revolutionary, Feminist, Lesbian And Poet

[poems-for-my-lady]

"Experience"

Georges Antoine Rochegrosse "Le poison des pierreries" - (1903)

Now you are gone I kiss your dented pillow

And wonder if it hungers like my breast

For the dear head we both have held in rest.

I said once: Love alone cannot assuage

My thirst, my hunger, love has no reply

For that wild questioning, for this fierce cry.

I said: there is no kiss can feed me now.

Perhaps love is life’s flower: I seek the root.

Yea, I have loved and love is dead sea fruit.

Yet, I lie here and kiss your dented pillow,

A trembling girl who loves you overmuch

A harp in anguish for the player’s touch.

From On a Grey Thread (Will Ransom, 1923) by Elsa Gidlow. 

Elsa Gidlow, born on December 29, 1898, was a poet and philosopher. Her book, On a Grey Thread (Will Ransom, 1923), is believed by historians to be the first collection of openly lesbian love poetry published in North America

[poems-for-my-lady]

"Mouthful of forevers"

🎨 Lawrence Alma Tadema: "In a Rose Garden" (1890)

“I am not the first person

you loved. You are not the first

person I looked at with a

mouthful of forevers.

We have both known loss like the

sharp edges of a knife. We have

both lived with lips more scar

tissue than skin.

Our love came unannounced in the

middle of the night. Our love came

when we’d given up on asking love

to come. I think that has to be

part of its miracle.

This is how we heal.

I will kiss you like forgiveness,

You will hold me like I’m hope.

Our arms will bandage and we will

press promises between us like

flowers in a book.

I will write sonnets to the salt of

sweat on your skin.

I will write

novels to the scar of your nose.

I will write a dictionary of all

the words I have used trying

to describe the way it feels to

have finally, finally found you.

And I will not be afraid

of your scars.

I know sometimes it’s still hard to

let me see you in all your cracked

perfection, but please know:

whether it’s the days you burn

more brilliant than the sun

or the nights you collapse into my

lap, your body broken into a

thousand questions, you are the

most beautiful thing I’ve ever

seen.

I will love you

when you are a still day,

I will love you

when you are a hurricane.”

Poem of : CLEMENTINE VON RADICS

[poems-for-my-lady]

"Things You Do When You’re Unable to Hold Them"

🎨 Charles courtney curran: "Venus veiling pandora" (1914)

"I buy your favorite foods, ready for your return home

After you did it once and said, "This is proof that you love me."

I walk long distances alone, thinking of a poem my friend wrote,

It says, "This is how distance kills you."

I hum - behind my breath - the rhythm of your phone number when I dial it.

I stare at my hands and wonder about their usefulness.

I think of pawning my thighs, selling the bones of my hips at a public auction.

I put my breasts in a box on the top shelf of the closet;

I have no need for them now.

I think of things to tell you when I see you,

Stories like:

I just discovered that pumpkins are artistic fruits,

Or that Cary Grant worked in a traveling circus first,

Or that most mammals are born able to walk and learn to run within minutes

So, we're not crazy for moving fast.

This morning, I wrote your name over the steam on my mirror, and I know well that it will disappear in moments

In my prettiest notebook I wrote "I miss you" ten thousand times

I wrote "I think I lost a rib"

I wrote "I envy the leaves because they know exactly when to fall off the branches and when to return as spring"

I wrote "Everyone is not you... and that’s a big problem."

Poem of : CLEMENTINE VON RADICS

[poems-for-my-lady]

“I have”

🎨 Franz Dvorak: "Four Roses" (1903)

i have known

many women

and the you of you

puzzles me.

it is not beauty

i have known

beautiful women.

it is not brains

i have known

intelligent women.

it is not goodness

i have known

good women.

it is not selflessness

i have known

giving women.

yet you touch me

in new

different

ways.

i become sand

on a beach

washed anew with

each wave of you.

with each touch of you

i am fresh bread

warm and rising.

i become a newborn kitten

ready to be licked

and nuzzled into life.

you are my last love

and my first love

you make me a virgin

and I want to give myself to you.

Poem of : Pat Parker

Pat Parker in 1989 photograph by Robert Giard