Showing posts with label poetry of Margaret Gunning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry of Margaret Gunning. Show all posts

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Sex, drugs, violence (in no particular order)





Poems by Margaret Gunning

                                Gone west


It seems in my life I have always
moved west, New Brunswick, Alberta,
the boardwalk behind the Quay;

it’s a left-handed sort of life
driving me heartwards, though never,

no never,

heartwise.


                                           that day
when I thought I saw you   on the boardwalk
my guts jumped:               it
jerked the hook in my colon
(you always knew about bait)

You know how it was:    I wanted to stand on my desk
on the last day of classes
and shout:  o captain!  My captain!

But you had your own rotation – I saw
it reel from view, and

(helpless to catch you)

watched your spiralling apogee

What is the remotest segment of an orbit?
Booze, blondes.  Too much of
a good thing.  But I did love you.
We wandered, Pooh and Piglet in an
Escher maze, searching for heffalumps.
You calmly said, “Watch this,” and set fire
to my mind.
I saw you as the human yoyo, bobbing up and
                                                                   down,
sleeping, walking the dog, in and out
and ‘round the world.





I knew you’d be back, like hounds,
like a cycle of blood, like black
fruit springing into tree.  When the
string broke, I hid my eyes, and
said, but it’s only a lute,
it will heal itself,
half-hoping I was wrong.

I don’t know why or how God looks
after you, beached like a Wellfleet whale,
stared at by the curious.  I don’t know
how God manages.  It was beyond me.

And so I kept on moving.


Stalked by surprise

 Part A:

Is Sprung the past tense of Spring?
Is the world (then) forever sprung
ruptured/like a
cosmic hernia?
Will I in fact (in spite of
Shelley Winters in spite of
everything) fall into the butter
again?





Part B:

If life is a puckered

Promise,

an orgasm

dipped in alum,

The dire fruit of an

(unsuspecting
(apricot,

A half-born bee,

then:  what are you doing

in my
coatcloset, HEY!
                          Einstein,
Get out of there,/Fondle me, man
Even with your subconscious
and  - even though God
doesn’t throw dice
                        (dead man)
I’ll throw you  (out)





Buzzed

Your hive was a hum of

Cortical surprise; a splendor
                                (golden fuzz)
Of psalms:  a salty                        of Bee
being.  Such passion
in the apiary!  Such dizzy repro- (se-?)
Duction!  Bee

attitudes frighten me.  I will pick
the salacious hairs, the

haloed laughter of swarms
From my bee-blurred eyes. 



SPRING-LOADED


April’s where I live,
         the place my heart opens
                   rose-burgeoning, shinyleaf-new

a smell of bursting peonies,
           bumble-dizzy bees bumping
                       butter-and-eggs

swollen buds thrusting
          in the lovesick air.

Leaden, laden, leavened, lavendered, loaded,
one big quivering nose, a moist surprise
hatched out in the nest of my body

April Pegasus-leaps
        in my pulse,

sun-shot                    Pan-piped
       heady, relentlessly

tender,
recklessly

sweet.




                                               BIRD IN THE HAND


My bird in the
hand,

My bright dollar,

blonde head

Hard as a dime,

there in your
trench coat streaming
with spring, wet
as new robins
           or
Downy as stamens,

                          all
I would suck up/the
merry contempt in
your sleigh-bell
eyes,

Pepper my salt
with the wit of your
wounds,

Dive into the

iced-over pool

of your

voluptuous
disdain.
  

 

                                                            

 GINA



sweet shy
dark girl          I’ve seen her

here before


she always wore the best clothes
(silvery things/bangles
feathered skirts
necklace made
from the teeth of a wolf)


now I see Gina in the ward
kitchen.        Still beautiful
big-eyed
part Cree                            her hair tied back
she shows me the tracings of
partly-healed               gashes
sewn back together in
a gridwork


                                                                 hands/
on her arms,                                                 wrists.


She must be twenty or so
No one comes to visit

Once she had a boyfriend
but he got sick too





              

i)          Paul

(Biblical
spinning/verbs,

(so many gulled

fever
dreams swarming
in chaotic
blindness) a blueberry
moment --- Your
            (bees
hasty argument
My slant,    (arcing/jerked
dilapidated/heart

Your groin of sweated
     blood of the lamb
fire/Leo in a glass
snowstorm








 ii)  Cancun


      gusted
the             rustle

of a physics class



                                                                                                                                                aroused by the
                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                clouded haste



                                                                             of a subconscious
                                                                             baritone door:If this
                                                                             were an opera




(a damp weeping
head as if just
crowning a gush of
birth) orgasmic aria

                                            
                                                 another                                                 
                                                /       
                                             dizzy commingle
                                                   /

                                                   
                                                fruitstone
                                                    /
                                             the  fingerings

                                            of florence

                                           nightingale





                                               iii) Small fish



                                                                /discharging
                                                 i may not get there in time
                                                 The minute darting
                                                            /disengaging
                                                 (all of a mind/marineswarm
                                                                             (salty
                                                          severalness(sequence
                                                  multiplicity of           minnows
                                                           stirring severance
                                                              /drowsy
                                                  dousing in          dowsing
                                                                dis/       dosing
                                                  Persal dis
                                                  Proportionate dis
                                                                /Persian
                                                  passion
                                                        (possession
                                                  saul’s      Slick
                                                                              silksliver
                                                   (Slippery                    purse




                                                :This is the ship that
iv)        a                                    launched a thousand
clitoris        pearl                                           tiny---briny
                                    faces; this/mollusc/heart
                             dampalternate being/trace of shellfish                                       
                                                                              /flesh
                          (repairing its innerdamage)
                             The princess and the pea
                          A glistening eye/(that never

                                  stops seeing






     Points of departure

What did intelligent women
do then?  When their brains
were squeezed together by
whalebone
prisons,

when sexual lust was still criminal.
Men breathed and heaved then,
full of leviathan waters

what did intelligent women do then?
did they get examined
by dirty doctors
with a velvet speculum?

Did they speculate
on the nature of existence
and give themselves orgasms
under the sheets?

What did intelligent women
do then?  

                                              


You-riff (a favorite)

If mint ice cream could be made flesh,
(moreover
                Gershwin’s
                                   (innocent
piano keys (not the    (inanimate:  but the
        (hot
very (act of playing) teeth, a fine Mary-

morning

(could be a bald spot:a hunch of shoulders)
                                                                 (all
then I guess this Everywhere where we  (call
the universe/this minimouse, into the Here

would be exhaling you/expressing you
daily,
in daily bliss, dally, bless blush        doily
in gaily, earthshivering

Maymess triumphant, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’
hosiery/then, I guess your

Bashful tigersmile’s a paean to
“Great Chocolate!” eyes  (a-bleeding
                                         (monument to

(hooting hyaena’s
                            laugh’s a plainsong to)





http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html