Find and share the perfect poems.
It is all about speed and flexibility, about speed
and flexibility and teamwork and accuracy. We move
like neurons charging in your head, man,
choreography from the ground up,
meanwhile smelling the hot asphalt and exhaust,
the chainlink fence around the playground spinning
past the corner of our eye, with the traffic and storefronts,
what the ball feels like in our hands, hard, pebbled, orange
and black, what the dribble feels like,
the sound and pound, the sort of lope we adopt
getting on and off the court, the way somebody looks
when he starts to play, his face and his sneakers, it’s all part of it.
When we swivel it is a whiplash, when we pass it is a cannonball,
when we leap, we hang in the air like Nijinsky taking a nap,
when the ball goes in we slap each others’ shoulders and butts
then turn like a flock of barn swallows, you know our ancestors
were farmers, they had barns, they watched the birds
flying around in formation at sunset,
or a school of fish, you know the way fish dart
in unison, the way the tempo changes and they just bat off,
you can’t begin to guess how they do it. You could say
we slosh like waves in a bathtub, back and forth,
and when we dunk one it feels good, but
the way we play it, there are no pauses in this game.
I am not lyric any more I will not play the harp for your pleasure I will not make a joyful noise to you, neither will I lament for I know you drink lamentation, too, like wine so I dully repeat you hurt me I hate you I pull my eyes away from the hills I will not kill for you I will never love you again unless you ask me
The downward turning touch the cry of time fire falling without sound plunge my hand in the wound children marching and dying all that I do is a crime because I do not reach their mouths silently crying my boychild reaches with his mouth it is easy, being a mother his skin is tender and soft kisses stitch us together we love as long as we may then come years without kisses when he will turn away not to waste breath when I too will fall embracing a pillow at night touching the stone of exile reaching my hand to death
But it's really fear you want to talk about and cannot find the words so you jeer at yourself you call yourself a coward you wake at 2 a.m. thinking failure, fool, unable to sleep, unable to sleep buzzing away on your mattress with two pillows and a quilt, they call them comforters, which implies that comfort can be bought and paid for, to help with the fear, the failure your two walnut chests of drawers snicker, the bookshelves mourn the art on the walls pities you, the man himself beside you asleep smelling like mushrooms and moss is a comfort but never enough, never, the ceiling fixture lightless velvet drapes hiding the window traffic noise like a vicious animal on the loose somewhere out there— you brag to friends you won't mind death only dying what a liar you are— all the other fears, of rejection, of physical pain, of losing your mind, of losing your eyes, they are all part of this! Pawprints of this! Hair snarls in your comb this glowing clock the single light in the room