Spotlighted like some movie star,
how do you stand, being so far?
Lights that glare on polygraph eyes
twitching at truth instead of lies.
Gave your life to forbidden love—
find me some thorns, make me a glove.
Capulet to my Montague? Try:
summer red to my winter blue.
Feb 8, 2020
Feb 8, 2020 at 4:48 PM UTC
Remember that kiss in the winter snow?
The warmth of your cheek against my lips.
I'm finally letting that go,
the way you said Merry Christmas
like next year mattered, too.
Remember your fingers knotted through mine?
The lamplight on the bench was a glow.
I'm letting that go,
the way you chuckled when it was
too dark for anyone to tell it was you and me
Remember we played video games
in your basement by the coffee table, too low?
Maybe you can't let that go,
the way I beat you with a light saber
even though it was my first time playing.
Remember the way you didn't say goodbye
on the last proper day?
I want to let it go,
the way I was a coward
and I didn't run after you to be the one in the right.
Remember when you forgot a cookie box
at my house, on a day when we'd talked?
And I ran down the road to give it back to you.
(That was the last time we really spoke, wasn't it?)
Then you laughed and I laughed and we said goodbye
again, at last,
and you turned and walked to the bus station
and I let you go.
Jan 26, 2020
Jan 26, 2020 at 9:38 AM UTC
You want *** to be soft, to be sweet,
like dripping honey warm
and liquid flowing
boundless you don’t
want the mountain ridges
on your lover’s chapped lips,
you don’t want the
vase to
s h a t t e r
on the floor as though there is a
limit to the sugar, you
want to pour prettiness
into every crevice of your
heart and you want love
to be sweet and soft even
when your lover is
hard and cold, eyes like
ice and mouth powerful
like mountains and heart
weathered like beach pebble—
you want a ****** with
candy lips and long lashes and
feathery thoughts with long
sighs of hot breath not
real words not speaking while
loving not thinking while kissing
not hard and bitter,
you want soft and sweet,
you can’t take it like
bedsheets and bittersweet
not soft not hard
not sweet not bitter.
Oct 26, 2019
Oct 26, 2019 at 4:42 PM UTC
What wicked intent, wretched little Ravidus,
casts you headlong into my iambics?
Which god, ill-invoked by you, readies to stir up a crazed fray?
Or was it so that you can become the subject in popular chatter?
What do you want? Is it pleasing to be famous in whatever way you desire?
You will be, since you determined to covet my loves, along with eternal retributions.
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 8:02 PM UTC
I would like, papyrus, that you tell the young love poet,
my friend, Caecilius, that he should come to Verona,
leaving behind the walls of New Como and the shore of Larius:
for I wish that he receives certain cogitations
of a friend of his and mine.
On which account, if he will be wise, he will devour the road,
although a glittering girl might call him back a thousand times as he is leaving,
and, flinging both arms around his neck,
she might beg that he delay,
who now, if true things are announced to me,
perishes through uncontrollable love of him:
for from which time she reads his incomplete "Mistress of Dindymus,"
from that time, flames consume the innermost marrow of the poor girl.
I forgive you, girl more learned than the Sapphic Muse;
for the "Great Mother" of Caecilius is elegantly incomplete.
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 7:58 PM UTC
You shall dine well, Fabullus, at my house
in a few days, if the gods favour you,
if you will have brought with you a good and large dinner,
not without a shining girl
and wine and wit and all your laughter.
If you will have brought these things, I say, our charming one,
you shall dine well: for the purse of your Catullus is full of cobwebs.
But, in turn, you will receive undiluted loves
of anything which is either more delightful or more elegant:
for I will give to you perfume,
which the Venuses and Cupids gave to my girl,
which, when you will smell it,
you will ask the gods so that they might
make all of you, Fabullus, a nose.
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 7:53 PM UTC
He seems to me to be like a god;
he, if it is lawful to surpass the gods,
who, sitting opposite, gazes at you repeatedly,
and listens to you, laughing sweetly,
which snatches away all senses from miserable me;
for as soon as I beheld you, Lesbia, nothing is left to me of my voice in my throat.
But my tongue is numb,
a subtle flame runs down beneath my limbs,
my ears ring with their own sound,
my eyes are covered with twin night.
Leisure, Catullus, is burdensome to you:
in leisure you exult too much, and you run riot.
Leisure first ruined both rulers and prosperous cities.
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 7:49 PM UTC
Sparrow, delight of my girl,
with whom she is accustomed to play,
whom she is accustomed to hold in the fold of her dress,
for whom, seeking rapaciously, she is accustomed to give her fingertip and to urge sharp bites,
when it is pleasing for me to make some loving joke for my shining desire,
and a solace of her sorrow,
I believe, so that her so heavy passion may grow quiet.
If only I were able to play with you yourself,
and to lift the doleful woes of your soul!
It is as pleasing to me as they say that the golden apple was to the swift girl,
which unbound her girdle, having been fastened for a long time.
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 7:47 PM UTC
Hello.
S'been a while, huh?
I've been missing that,
Those letters you wrote,
The lipstick stains stretching across the paper.
Red was never your colour, love.
You'd never wear anything but black,
Unless they'd make a darker colour.
You and your punk rock.
It wouldn't be wrong to say I miss it.
But does missing you make a difference,
In you and I?
Do we change from who we are,
To miss the person we once had?
The light to our dark?
Does the coin suddenly have two sides,
When it's been polished again?
You never liked my cryptic words,
And I hated your honeyed poison.
But I could never turn away,
From the part of you,
That did not speak.
I could never stop looking,
At your black and blue,
At your simple formula,
At your sun-kissed smile,
Nor at your cut-up honour,
Your tragic vanity,
And your stomped-upon pride.
And you could not forget about my words,
Because even the ones you don't understand,
They ring true,
And they ring loud.
You do not lie in words,
But I live in words.
May 29, 2018
May 29, 2018 at 1:09 PM UTC
The one who holds the most power is they who have learned not to be swayed by words; but to sway words themselves.
Dec 10, 2017
Dec 10, 2017 at 8:20 AM UTC