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"Of all that is written- I love only what a person has written with his own blood." - Friedrich Nietz (or ink - I like ink too)sch, 'Love is a serious mental disease.' - Plato, a many splendoured, All Consuming, Freelove, Hand in glove The sun shines out of our behinds, I'll show you in spring it's a treacherous thing, Loud like . . ., Lurve, V
The Touch by Anne Sexton
For months my hand was sealed off
in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings.
Perhaps it is bruised, I thought,
and that is why they have locked it up.
You could tell time by this, I thought,
like a clock, by its five knuckles
and the thin underground veins.
It lay there like an unconscious woman
fed by tubes she knew not of.
The hand had collapsed,
a small wood pigeon
that had gone into seclusion.
I turned it over and the palm was old,
its lines traced like fine needlepoint
and stitched up into fingers.
It was fat and soft and blind in places.
Nothing but vulnerable.
And all this is metaphor.
An ordinary hand — just lonely
for something to touch
that touches back.
The dog won’t do it.
Her tail wags in the swamp for a frog.
I’m no better than a case of dog food.
She owns her own hunger.
My sisters won’t do it.
They live in school except for buttons
and tears running down like lemonade.
My father won’t do it.
He comes in the house and even at night
he lives in a machine made by my mother
and well oiled by his job, his job.
The trouble is
that I’d let my gestures freeze.
The trouble was not
in the kitchen or the tulips
but only in my head, my head.
Then all this became history.
Your hand found mine.
Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot.
Oh, my carpenter,
the fingers are rebuilt.
They dance with yours.
They dance in the attic and in Vienna.
My hand is alive all over America.
Not even death will stop it,
death shedding her blood.
Nothing will stop it, for this is the kingdom
and the kingdom come.
Reading this back some may find this reads as a rather sad poem, whereas Esme thinks it quite lovely; such layering and building of the images followed by what is a joyous ending. A love poem with a heart beating in it. Anne Sexton is superb.
An excellent choice for Valentine’s Day 🙂
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Thanking you sir. beams
You will have realised by now I am very slow, so bear with, it’s a technical issue (brain)
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A meatware malaise? I suffer from the same, more and more as time goes on.
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Meatware malaise…yes, though the image I got initially from those words was, I suspect, not the same as yours, hahahahaha.
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Colour me intrigued… I’d love to know how you interpreted that expression.
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Round these parts there’s a saying if you suffer from malaise, ‘I’ve got the dick’. Hence the meat element.
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Oh, that’s priceless :D. And it has so much potential, as one of my brothers is named Richard.
PeNdantry chuckling and snorting while trying hard to cut his comment short as we’re entering the really really thin area
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My heart is beating too. This is so beautifully poignant. Thank you for sharing Esme 💕
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Let’s keep it that way Val. I’m glad you see beauty in this as I do ❤
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Tiny drums with exquisite rhythm sounds just right. 💕
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